


Et in Arcadia Ego

by SufferingIsAChoice



Series: The Old Gods of Arcadia Bay [1]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: CW mentions of suicidality, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Post-Canon, Post-Save Chloe Price Ending, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Quarantine, Save Chloe Price Ending, Slow Build, Time Travel, Trauma, it's gonna get heavy and maybe really dark, it's gonna get weird, past amberprice, pricefield
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:08:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 40,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25831846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SufferingIsAChoice/pseuds/SufferingIsAChoice
Summary: You love your wife. You know that. But secrets will out, and old emotions will resurface, and you have to ask yourself...was everything that happened in Arcadia Bay, everything you chose to do, worth it, in the end?
Relationships: Maxine "Max" Caulfield/Chloe Price
Series: The Old Gods of Arcadia Bay [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946536
Comments: 206
Kudos: 60





	1. With Respects to Belinda Carlisle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: Reclaimed lesbophobic slur.

A Place on Earth

You wake up bleary-eyed, a little hungover maybe. Gunk in your eye. Were you drinking last night? You don’t think it was much, but you’re not sure.

For a second you start, do you have to work today? Down at the shop? And then you settle back into bed, as your memory returns. Quarantine. Pandemic. No work today. None for a few months, at least, they’re saying. Bills will be tight, you think, and you already feel the clench in your jaw, the grit between your teeth.

No, not now, you force yourself, making you open your jaw, and settle back into your pillow. It’s warm in here, just on the edge of hot, and uncomfortable. You’re only wearing a pair of boxers, but your hair is too long. Fuck, when was the last time you cut it? Why do you still not have air conditioning in your apartment? The windows are open, and the fan whirs, but it’s not quite enough to keep it comfortably cool. You could kick the sheets off, you think, but as soon as you think of it, your eyes drift down to her, still sleeping, across from you.

Shit, she’s hot.

You almost snort, amused by the pun in your own head. Yes, she IS hot, I mean, that was a third of why you married her. No, make it a half. Half because she’s hot, but also half because of...everything else. But, no, you remind yourself, back on topic. She is shorter than you, still too skinny, but just kicking off heat today. You’re sleeping next to a goddamn hot water bottle, and it is going to be a really warm day.

And all the same, she’s all wrapped up in her nightgown, in your sheets, and you can’t kick them off without waking her up. You settle back down, starting to sweat, just a little. It’s not like there’s anywhere to go today. You might as well let your wife sleep, and enjoy the view too, while you’re at it.

Fuck, she’s hot.

Sunlight is filtering through your blinds, in patches, caught by the breeze blowing through the open windows. You’re sure she could say something about that lighting, big fancy words she learned from all her art shows and college courses. But you don’t remember them. You just think that she looks good in that light, her hair long and brown, with the streak of red through it you convinced her to get four months ago. It’s a wreck, you know, and her mouth is open, just a little, in a snore, with a wet spot of spit underneath it on her pillow, but you can’t imagine her looking more pretty.

You almost laugh again. How many times have you thought that? So often you are thinking to yourself, “god, my wife is hot. I love her so much,” and so frequently you tell yourself that this is the best she has ever looked. How often? Back when you were kids? When you couldn’t tell her? At your wedding, done on impulse after it was legalized, when David had cried? That vacation you took down to San Francisco? Her in her underwear in a pool in Arcadia Bay? Before…

You stop yourself, take a deep breath. A global pandemic can be isolating, your therapist told you, during your last virtual visit. It can bring back bad memories of when you used to be isolated, when you felt alone, and unwanted, unloved, after Rachel, before she came back into your life. And like the annoying fuck they are, your therapist has been right, that’s why you were drinking last night, you remember.

“Remember,” your therapist, fucking angel for not doubting you when you finally told them, “she chose you. She wanted to be with you. Still does. I know your mind sometimes tells you otherwise, but remember that.”

Fuck, weed would be good right now. Do you even have any in the apartment? No? Goddamn.

She stirs, just a little, in her sleep. A lot of people wouldn’t notice, but you know her. You’ve lived with her for almost seven years, now. You know the way she moves, the way she breathes. That little laugh she does after she kisses you. She’s waking up, you can tell, from the way her nose scrunches, and the way she makes a little snorting sound. Like every morning since the first, since after you both drove away, you begin with the same ritual, a reminder at first done for her, and later for yourself.

“I’m here, butterfly, I’m safe.”

The specifics of it have varied, of course, since the first morning, when she woke up screaming, and you had to hold her until the screams turned into sobs in your shoulder, as she said your name over and over again. At first it was always just her name, and yours. A reminder that you were safe. That you both were, and were together. And then there was the kiss. The second kiss, and the reminders changed. Nicknames crept in when you visited her parents, shy at first, and with increasing boldness. And then one morning that reminder had become something else, her kiss had grown in heat, and passion, and you felt her hands moving over your sides like you had dreamed from...when you were kids? You don’t even know. Sometime. You had started to dream, and she was everything you had ever wanted.

“If you say wowser I swear I am going to break up with you,” you had said, with a grin, when you were done, and ever since then, you were together.

And you kept on waking her up, each morning, with that reminder. You were here. You were safe. Chipmunk, Chanterelle, picture perfect, dreamgirl, dreamboat, that one summer where she accidentally got poison ivy and you insisted on calling her poison every morning. The nicknames came and went. Some mornings were sweet, some were short, some were sexy. But each time there was that reminder. I’m here. We’re together. 

“Hey, Chloe,” she says, her eyes still shut.

She shifts, her arms moving, and finding your bare skin, pulling her body closer to yours. For a moment you think she’s making a move on you, that she’s just horny, but instead she keeps her eyes closed, and settles against you. And for whatever fucking reason you keep thinking of your fucking therapist.

“But she’s quarantined here with me!” You almost had yelled. “I don’t have cars to repair, she isn’t going to art shows, and doing shoots, and taking classes. The only thing I’m doing is trying to get my degree online. She hasn’t spent this much time with me since...since…”

“Since right after the storm,” they said smoothly

“Yeah. And, like, fuck. She’s so smart, and pretty, and good at what she does. She goes to all these fancy places and knows all these things, and she’s married to a piece of shit white trash mechanic dyke who never went to college.”

“Chloe,” they had cautioned.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I shouldn’t talk about myself like that but…it’s just hard, you know? Even all these years later. I feel like the stink of that place is still on me. Like, everyone can tell how much of a screw up I am. My dad, my mom, Rachel, the whole town, they all got fucking taken out of my life, fucking left me, why is she still around? What happens if she spends all this time with me and she realizes she doesn’t love me anymore? I don’t think I can deal with that.”

“Remember, she chose you. She wanted to be with you. Still does. I know your mind sometimes tells you otherwise, but remember that. Have you seen anything that would tell you otherwise? Let’s do a little reality checking.”

“No,” you had sniffed.

“What has she been doing since quarantine started?”

“Well, she has all her art friends and stuff I don’t understand online.”

“And what has she been doing with you?”

“Well, we, uhh, we have sex a lot. And we’ve been marathoning these old horrible sci fi shows. Don’t tell her I said they’re bad, but they are. And we like to cook for each other, and she’s been encouraging my online classes.”

“Well,” your therapist had said, “that sounds like a pretty loving relationship between two women to me. Not much evidence there that she doesn’t like you.”

“Ugghh,” you had grunted, “why do you need to be right?”

“It’s one of my more annoying qualities. Do we agree, though?”

“Fine, but I am still a dyke. After all, I will not be compared to straight people during this unprecedented time.”

“No,” your therapist had laughed, “from what I’ve heard you would not like that.”

“Babe, babe,” Max says, and you drag your attention back to reality. “Earth to Chloe, do you hear me?”

“Nerd,” you say, running a hand through her hair, “yeah, I’m here. Just zoning out, you dork.”

She finally opens her eyes, and looks up at you. Older now, but it doesn’t feel like it. It never does. Years, now, and you don’t think you’ll ever get tired of those eyes, those freckles, the lines beginning to form where she smiles. You feel her heart beating, and her breathing against your bare chest, slow, calm. Safe. She feels safe with you. It’s been years since the night where she woke up, crying, telling you about the things she had seen and done. Maybe someday she’d use her powers again, she said, from time to time, sometimes teasing you with all the sexy ways she could use them. She had not, yet. You’d be able to tell. You know her very well, and you’d know if she was lying.

Not that she ever would.

“Careful,” she says, a twinkle in her eye, “you’d better not call me a nerd, I have this big, tall, strong wife who’ll beat you up if you do too often.”

And just like that the energy changes. The room feels even hotter, but in a good way. You know where this is going. And it will get there, in time, but for now you play along.

“Ha, she’s got nothing on me, I mean, look at this gun show.”

You kneel up in bed, mock flexing, the sheets falling from you, and you feel her eyes rake over you.

You never get tired of that feeling.

“Oh, you think you’re so tough,” she says, her body under yours, her nightgown already hiking up, “why don’t you show me?”

“Maxine Price-Caulfield, there is nothing more in the world I would rather do,” you say, smiling down at her.

Fuck, you think to yourself, one last time, my wife is hot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs Referenced:  
> -Heaven is a Place on Earth, by Belinda Carlisle
> 
> Other References:  
> -The nickname "Chanterelle" is from the podcast "Alice Isn't Dead."


	2. Unconditional Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW For mentions of suicidality, medication, and eating disorders.

“Who’s gonna take you hooome, tonight, who’s gonna take you home?” You sing along, with LJG in your earbuds, headbanging.

One reason to keep the hair, you remind yourself. Headbanging is awesome. There will be punk shows, after this. You’re gonna go to them, and maybe even drag Max along with you to a few.

“Babe!”

“Shit!”

You nearly spill the eggs you’re cooking, straight onto the kitchen’s linoleum, catch the handle of the frying pan at the last minute, and somehow fumble it back onto the stove. It’s only after it hits onto the stained and weathered top of your stove that you realize you burnt your hand on it. You curse, again, under your breath, and run to the sink. As always it takes a second for the water to burble through, brown at first, then running clear, and at least slightly below room temperature.

“Hey, hey, babe,” Max says, already all apologies, as she approaches you from behind, wrapping her hands around your waist, “are you alright?”

“Yeah, fuck,” you say again, “just don’t fucking sneak up on me like that.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and you feel the tone of it kick into your gut.

She’s defensive. You said too much and you shouldn’t. You haven’t lost your mouth, or your teeth, or your bite, and she’s still Max. Still the photographer, paying the bills for your shitty apartment. She deserves better than your temper, and anger, lashing out at whatever is close to you. Swallow down the anger, you tell yourself, remember to breathe, then act. Don’t do anything you’re going to regret.

“It’s okay,” you force yourself to smile, “just startled me. What’s up Pigeon?”

“Pigeon? That’s a new one. Brings back memories.”

“Alright, Pidge,” you say, forcing a smile, as she finally lets go of you, and you turn around.

“You should’ve been a mother,” your earphones blast, “you should’ve been a wife. You should’ve been gone from here years ago, you should be living a different life.”

You take them out and look at her, your wife. Your love. The one paying for your food. She’s smiling, but it doesn’t reach all the way up past her freckles to her eyes. You know how she fakes a smile and already alarm bells are going off in your head. Shit, did your therapist tell you what to do if you were stuck inside with your wife for this long and were screwing it up this bad? You don’t think so.

“What’s up, Max?” You say, holding your forced smile. “Wanted to talk?”

“Nah, it’s not important,” she says, waving it off, like you’ll believe that excuse. “Cooking?”

“Yeah,” you say, fumbling around and sliding the omelette out of the pan. “I know I’m still using the eggs and it’s not vegan, but hey I’m not ready to abandon eggs and cheese yet. They’re tasty.”

“Well, in fairness, you do make me some delicious meals when you do cook,” she says, smiling for real this time, you can tell from just her voice, even if she’s still not talking about something.

“I am a person of many talents,” you say, turning and bowing dramatically.

“Woman.”

“Right. Anyway, yeah, this was for me. I thought you were still on that union call thingy?”

“Organizing, yes,” she says, peeking out the window. “Raining today.”

“Yup,” you say.

Right at the moment the buzzer to your apartment rings.

“Delivery?” Your wife asks, raising her eyebrows elegantly.

“Probably the groceries. Shit getting food delivered is fucking expensive. And hella bougie.”

“Yeah but it’s better than you going out and getting exposed to it. Also, penny in the hella jar.”

“Fine, give me a second, I’m gonna go downstairs and grab it from the front of the building.”

You move towards the door to your cramped apartment, unlock it, remove the door jam that her dad insisted you get when he saw what neighborhood you were moving to, not that you ever minded the parties the upstairs neighbors threw. The door opens, and you see the man who lives across the hall walking down the stairs, past you. Without a mask. He sneezes, and you sigh. What a-

“Fine, give me a second, I’m gonna go downstairs-”

“Wait!”

“Yeah, Maxanthymum?” You ask, confused, pivoting on your heel.

“I, uh, love you.”

“Aww, hey, pidge, I love you too,” you say, something soft flashing across your face, you know, as she looks up at you, so skinny, tiny. Small.

You turn around, back towards the door jam that her dad insisted you get when he saw what neighborhood you were…

The realization kicks you in your stomach. Too late, Price-Caulfield. Too damn late, should’ve seen it the second it happened. But, like, fuck, how were you supposed to know, it’s been years since it happened.

“Holy fuckballs,” you say, wheeling on your heel, flashing back to the Two Whales, years ago, when she came storming back into your life, “you just did it, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” she squeaks, looking away from you in a way you hate.

“Holy shit Max,” you say, knowing it’s too loud, and aggressive even as you say it, “what the fuck happened for you to use it again? Did I fucking die?”

She’s flinching away, rubbing the back of her neck, and you are trying to control yourself. But it’s hard. Something happened. You remember the bad times you went through, almost four years ago now, when you went off your meds and took to taking long walks on the train tracks, and playing chicken with the engines. She had held you, then, taken all the knives out of the old apartment, and made you start therapy. But she hadn’t touched time. What the fuck was different now?

“No,” she says, small and defeated, “but the neighbor walked by you, and sneezed. And I, I didn’t want you to get it.”

You could almost laugh with how absurd it all is.

“Shit, Max,” you say, “I’m not gonna fucking get it, alright? It’s fine.”

“Babe,” she says, finally looking back up at you, “it isn’t. I know you’re having a rough time and I’m trying to be better, but, you don’t think I feel the same way? You don’t think I’m terrified of losing you too? If you die I...I don’t know what I’ll do either. Like you said, I don’t think I can live with that. It’s been scary, okay? I haven’t been dealing with it well. The pandemic. I can’t lose you again. I can’t even take that chance. I need to keep you safe. That’s why I turned back time.”

“You heard me talking to my therapist?” You ask, not even mad. “Fuck.”

“The walls are thin.”

“Shit, babe,” you say, closing the distance to her, “I had no idea. Why didn’t you tell me you were feeling this way?”

Your mind is racing already. You’ve been so wrapped up in yourself, and your own insecurities you barely thought about how this has been affecting her. Things are gonna change, you promise yourself. You’re gonna change things. Take care of her. Chloe taking care of Max, the way things are supposed to be. Be her big strong dyke wife again. She shouldn’t have to save you ever again.

“Because I didn’t want to be a burden,” she says, and you see her hand moving, in a gesture you haven’t thought about in years.

“Max, Max, Max,” you shout, “fuck, no, don’t you-”

“Fine, give me a second, I’m-”

She interrupts you, almost tackling you from behind. You curse under your breath, roll with her, and collapse to the floor, as gently as you possibly can, her on top of you, your back to the grimy carpet.

“Hey,” she says, smiling down at you.

You hear your neighbor walking by your door, outside in the hallway, and sneeze, as you answer.

“Hey, uh, what’s up?”

“Just think you’re hot as fuck,” she says, her voice mock deep.

“As fuck?”

“As fuck.”

“You too, Max, you too,” you say, moving up, and kissing her.

God she is too light. She needs to eat more, and something is off, you think, even as you feel the heat behind her lips you know so well, and run your hands through her hair.

“Awww,” she says, when you break, “Chloe does have a heart.”

“Ouch, not for long with your bony ass on it, can I get up and get you some food? Please?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” she says, shifting her body off you, to the floor. “I just love you. And wanted you to know. I’d do anything to keep you safe.”

“And I would too,” you say, rolling over, on top of her, and kissing her, with a smile. “I’m glad we are in agreement.”

You grab your earbuds, before you go out the door, putting them back in, with a new song playing.

“Even if your love, was unconditional, even if your love, was unconditional, it still wouldn’t be enough to save me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs referenced:  
> -True Trans Soul Rebel, by Against Me!  
> -Unconditional Love, by Against Me!


	3. She's Just a Girl When She Gets Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for lesbophobic slurs, both reclaimed and not.

She’s Just a Girl when She Gets Home.

You kiss her on the cheek, as she fries the onions. She’s in a loose t-shirt, your t-shirt, one you stole out of a dumpster a few years back. Old habits die hard, after all. That’s all she’s wearing, oversized, covering her cute little butt. I Tego Arcana Dei, the shirt proclaims, though you don’t know what the hell that means. When you got your old tattoo blacked out, leaving the flowers rising above, she got her first one, a little spiral on her left thigh. Her only tattoo. You’re not sure what it means either. That little tattoo, your shirt, and the fading stripe of red in her hair makes her about as punk as she ever could be.

Fuck, if David could see her now. Maybe he’d actually believe that it was her weed all those years ago, like she said, when she came storming back into your life. She smells better though, floral shampoo and food smell mixing in her long brown hair. You wrap your arms around her waist, rocking her back and forth, and close your eyes.

“I Tego Arcana Dei,” she mutters.

“What was that baby?”

“Beware, I guard the secrets of god,” she says again, and now you’re starting to get really freaked out. “I figured it out. It’s an anagram. It can’t be a fucking coincidence. Nothing ever really is.”

“Max,” you say, turning her around, away from the stove, hating that you are raising your voice, even as you do it, “what the fuck are you talking about?”

“Forget it, Chloe.”

“How the fuck can I? What aren’t you telling me? I'm your wife, I have a right to know.”

She looks up at you, and makes a motion that stirs some deep, dark part of your memory, you long ago thought you forgot.

“Fuck, no, Babe-”

You wrap your arms around her waist, rocking her back and forth, and close your eyes.

“You seem to be enjoying yourself,” she says brightly, maybe just a hint forced.

“I promise it’s a gun in my pants,” you joke.

“Asshole,” she says, elbowing you gently in your gut.

“What’s this? Fighting back Onion Queen? I can go get my gun out of our bedroom if you really want. I mean, you seemed to enjoy it last night.”

“You’re lucky you’re so hot,” she says, craning her head backwards, and kissing you, lightly, just for a moment. “What’s got you in such a good mood?”

“Well,” you say, closing your eyes and burying your face in her neck, “my hot wife is making food for me, and you smell ridiculously femme.”

“I’m not femme,” she says, as she adds peppers to the dish she’s making.

“No, maybe not, you say. You’re my bi babe. But compared to me you’re femme.”

“Anyone compared to you is femme, ‘cause you’re the gayest person I know,” she says, reaching around behind her, and catching your hair in her fingers.

You remember after the storm you were in too much shock to talk about who you were. Even when you first kissed, and after, when you were fucking like rabbits, you never talked about what either one of you was. It was at her parents house, after the long, wandering road trips, that her dad had described her as bi. Apparently she had come out during her time in Seattle. Another thing you had missed out on. You had gotten pissed for a little bit, back then, still working through things.

“I kinda assumed you were bi too?” She had said, sitting on her childhood bed, looking up at you pacing around.

“I don’t know!” You had retorted. “It was in fucking Arcadia Bay, not here in Seattle. It’s not like fucking anyone was telling me this shit. Yeah, I got dyke, and lesbo, and queer, but they were all fucking names shouted at me by the nobodies who fucking lived there. No one sat down and explained for me how this shit worked.”

“Did you ever want to be with a boy?” She had asked, softly.

“I don’t know,” you raged on, “fucking boy toys. Not, fucking Nathan Prescott, and Warren. Piece of shit, every one, only trust a fucking woman.”

“Do you ever want to be?”

You had paused, and looked at her, back then, all those years ago. Hurt, lonely. Traumatized by the storm. And by you. And you had forced down your anger, and your tears, and had answered her.

“No, ‘cause then I’d have to leave you. You and me, Max, together forever.”

“Then Chloe Price,” she had said, “I think you might be hella gay.”

“Yeah, you best believe I’m the gayest person you know,” you say, in your kitchen, nibbling on her ear. “‘Cause I’m your big, butchdyke hubby.”

When you went on that first road trip to New York, the one where she was trying to get her work into a gallery, this random suit had shoulder checked you, muttering about you being a fucking dyke, under his breath. You had punched him in the back of his head, and after that you had given yourself your first bad undercut. You didn’t tell David that, when you called him. That night, in your cheap hotel, was the first time she had ever called you her butch.

“Wait what?” You had asked, as she ran her fingernails over your scalp.

“Butch. Like, as opposed to femme.”

“Still not following you, Tribe 8.”

“Like,” she had said, struggling for words, “old school lesbians.”

“Oh. I think I’ve heard of this. Not, that, like, anyone told me about this shit, remember. I was in Arcadia...”

“Yeah, I know,” she had interrupted, “I just like the thought of you being my butch.”

“Well, in that case,” you had said, “I like being your butch. Gotta do some research on what that actually means, I guess.”

“You’re my wife,” she says, finally turning around, in your kitchen, and kissing you, as you hold her waist in your hands, “and I love you.”

“Love you too. When’s dinner gonna be read Max Headroom?”

“You’re impossible,” she says, shoving you lightly on your shoulder, as her smile widens. “In awhile. Like I told you ten minutes ago. Good cooking takes time.”

“Aww, but I’m hungry,” you fake pout.

“Go find something to do,” she says, kissing you again, before turning around again.

You kiss her back, and walk towards your bathroom. There’s not much to do, in your small apartment, of course, but you have an idea and poor impulse control, and an electric pair of clippers, and an idea. A horrible one, maybe, but what’s gonna happen? All the bitches in your engineering classes are gonna judge you over zoom? And it’s not like Max will object to anything you’ve ever done with your hair before.

“Babe! Food’s ready!” You hear, a little later.

“Coming!” You shout, turning off the clippers, and looking at yourself in the mirror one more time, before you leave.

She nearly drops the plates she’s carrying, when she sees you, and for a second you feel that familiar stab up through your gut. Still impulsive. Still Chloe. What if she doesn’t like it? What if it’s the last straw for her?

“Chloe,” she says, putting her plates down and running over to you, in that way she does, with her arms up, “you shaved your head!”

“Yeah, uhhh, I did,” you say, rubbing your hand across it. “Do you like it?”

“I love it,” she says, and as she speaks, she runs her hand over it, like she wants the sensation of your scalp pricking her hands.

“Fuck,” you say, allowing yourself to smile, “fuck, I’m glad. It was fucking impulse, and I was worried you’d hate it.”

“Baby,” she says, smiling up at you, “if I hated it I’d just rewind time and stop you from doing it.”

“Heh, right, you say,” beaming, and then, a second later, you see her face and make the connection. “Wait.”

“Shit,” she mutters, and you see a motion of her hand, upwards, and you react fast, acting on a memory that seems at once both distant and dark, but also recent, as if this had all happened before, and recently, at that.

“No!” You say, taking her hand. “Do not take back my life, Max!”

“Don’t yell at me, Chloe,” she mumbles, looking away.

“No,” you say, feeling bile rising in you, “this is my life too. I get to live it, and I have a right to know things.”

“Fuck, shit,” she mutters, lowering her hand, “you’re right. I’m sorry.”

“And I am entitled to know if my wife has her powers back,” you shout, hating yourself for not lowering your voice, not controlling yourself, for potentially hurting the woman you love the most in the world, even as your anger fights against that. “So tell me, Max Caulfield, how long have they been back? Tell it all, from the beginning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs referenced:  
> -Butch in the Streets, Femme in the Sheets, by Tribe 8
> 
> Other references:  
> -"I Tego Arcana Dei" is a Latin phrase meaning "Begone! I guard the secrets of god." More relevant, however, is the phrase that it is an acronym for, at least for this fic.


	4. Love, Love, Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for allusions to suicidality, car accidents, mental illness and death.

Love, Love, Love

“Tell it all, from the beginning,” she says, and you feel your gut sink, lower than it has in years, hurting like it did when you saw her die.

You’re afraid.

You’ve known this has been coming. It always was. Sooner or later she’d figure it out, or the guilt would catch up with you. You love her, and you can’t hide a secret for years and expect it not to come out, for you to not tell her, the one person you ever told about the power in the first place. You sigh, remind yourself that you love her, that you chose her, and still do choose her, and begin.

“Begone, there are secrets here that are not made for you,” a voice shouts in your ear, transcendentally loud, and impossibly far away. “Soon we shall see each other face to face, but not now.”

You are in a storm. Or maybe you are the storm, bearing down on the city, and tearing it apart. It’s hard to tell where you begin and it ends. There is only sound, and fury, and destruction chasing you, through Seattle. There is the little library you read Annie on My Mind in, back when you first moved here, and realized that you had had a crush on Chloe, and had failed to tell her. There is the restaurant where you told your parents you wanted to go to Blackwell, back to Arcadia Bay. There is the park where you came out for the first time. There they are, all getting blown away. You bring ruin to everything you touch, and as the waterspout, the tornado, closes around you, you know that it is all your fault. And then she’s there, dying, once again, and you scream out her name.

“Chloe!”

“I’m here Max. I’m safe. You’re safe. Just breathe with me.”

You wake up in her arms. It’s early March, 2015, and you are safe with her. There is death back in Arcadia Bay, and in your dreams, but she is here. Your lover. Your girlfriend. She’s in a tank top, her hair long, and greening at the ends, where the dye is fading. It is before you get married, before she gives herself an undercut. Before she realized she liked being your butch. After your road trips, in her truck, and your time with your parents. After the storm, after your powers left. You are in your own apartment, a studio, tiny, without even a real kitchen, where you moved after moving out from your parents, just a few months before. But you don’t care. Chloe is here.

“Chloe,” you say again, more of a whisper, than anything else.

She wraps her arms around you in response. Your eyes are closed, but you don’t care. She’s there, you know, more than anything. You can smell her, the Axe body spray, the weed, the harsh chemicals in her hair, the faint scent of oils from her job in the car shop, where she is learning to repair cars. And you can feel her, too, her ribs, slowly rising, and falling as she breathes, the muscles she is building up in the shop. Her heart beating, slow and steady. You chose her. Arcadia Bay is gone, and she is here. You chose her, and you are both safe. It was just a dream, you try to convince yourself.

“They’re getting worse, Max,” she says, after a few minutes of silence.

“You can’t know that,” you say, upset that she’s right.

“Bullshit, Max,” she says, and you can feel the venom in her voice, that reminder that despite her job, and your scholarship and school work and shows, and your apartment, Chloe is still Chloe, and she hasn’t lost her bite. “I sleep next to you each fucking night. Have since we moved in with your parents. Before that, on the road in the shit motels. Everyday you wake up next to me, do you think I don’t know when your dreams are bad? Fuck, you don’t think I don’t know what bad dreams are like?”

“Maybe,” you say, feeling the tension building, as you sit up, pulling yourself away from her, “but you haven’t seen what I’ve seen.”

“Haven’t seen shit? Like I didn’t deal with my dad dying, and watching my whole fucking town, my fucking life get washed away, just like fucking Rachel? Fuck you, Max, I’m not sober enough to deal with this.”

She rolls over, in her short-shorts, and tank top. Her legs are shaggy, and her hair is a mess of her natural colors, and old dye. She is hot as hell, you think, as she gets stoned. Pissed at you too, and you don’t have anywhere to go. It’s a tiny apartment. So you do the only thing you can do, roll out of bed, and go get a shower, away from her, in your closet-like bathroom. Giving you both some space, as you try to figure out what went wrong. There was a time you could have just had that conversation again, you think, for just a moment, but you stop yourself. You can’t think about going back. Those thoughts do not end well. You have enough on your plate keeping Chloe safe.

Keeping Chloe safe, you think, as the water pours over you, scaldingly hot. Since she came storming back into your life, in her pickup, you’ve been keeping Chloe safe. The inside of her head isn’t always a nice place for her, you know. BPD? Bipolar? PTSD? You don’t pry, but you know her, and the meds she takes, officially and unofficially. You know her struggles. You kept her safe on the road, you kept her safe when you moved back in with your parents, and as her girlfriend you have to keep her safe, here in your first apartment. You’ve seen her die, over and over and over again. In the bathroom, on the train tracks, again and again, in the junkyard, twice, and once in another timeline, that you yourself created. You watched a whole town get destroyed for her.

You destroyed that town, killed everyone in it.

No, you say, in your mind. You’ve been down that path. You will not think those thoughts. Block them out, don’t go there. The universe decided that the life of one random, traumatized, poor queer kid from nowhere was worthless, and you told the universe to go fuck itself. Chloe is worth it. You made that choice and you will live with it, Max. And more than that you won’t be a burden on her. If you could go fix that conversation you would, but you can’t, so you’ll have to do it the hard way. Old fashioned. No time travel.

“Hey babe,” you say, as you step out of the tiny, moldy bathroom.

She’s gotten dressed. Well, more or less. Pulled on some jeans, put on a bra and some boots at least.

“Yeah, hey Max,” she says, not looking at you.

“It’s a Saturday,” you say, pulling on a t-shirt, and a pair of shorts, “I don’t have school, you don’t have to go into work. We could go explore Seattle together? Have you ever seen the Fremont troll? Especially at night, when the tourists are gone, sometimes they say you can see figures there, in grey hoodies. Strange things, sheep skulls, and stuff like that. Some people say they worship that statue, or they say something ancient lives there.”

“I’m gonna go out, Max,” she says shortly, as she stands up, and stomps towards the door.

“Out?” You say, feeling your own heart jump, and skip a beat.

“Yeah. Out.”

“Are you mad at me?”

She sighs, heavily, and turns back towards you.

“Mad that you won’t talk about it. About the dreams you have, and what happened at Arcadia Bay. ‘Cause I know you have those dreams. You can’t bottle it up forever. But I’m not mad that you have shit going on after what happened. I’ve got enough shit too, I know. Just mad you won’t share it with your girlfriend. And I need some space today. This place is so fucking small.”

She opens the door, and stalks out, and for some reason, you find yourself running after her, in just a t-shirt and shorts, in bare feet. You have a vision, as you move after her, down the stairs towards the street, of terrible things happening to her. You have to keep her safe. You can’t lose her. Not again. Never again.

It’s funny, you will think later, as you are telling this story to her, in a different apartment, in a different city, in 2020, when she is your wife. You would have guessed, back then, that if your powers ever came back it would have been protecting her again. Keeping her safe. Because that’s what you did, right? You kept Chloe safe. But instead they came back because you were an idiot, and got yourself killed.

The car comes out of nowhere, hurtling down the street, as you run across it, calling her name. You hear the screech of brakes. Too late, though, it won’t be able to stop. For one second, before the impact, before you feel the weight of the car slamming into you, shattering your bones, ending your life, you look at her, the woman you chose to save, because her life had value. Because she’s beautiful. Because she’s your best friend, and your lover, and worth Arcadia Bay, worth the world. And for just one moment the regrets, the nagging doubts, the dread, and fear and guilt that constantly haunt you go away. For just one moment, as she looks at you, you see fear and panic in her eyes.

“I love you, Chloe,” you want to say.

“Some moments last forever,” another voice says, grey and distant, “but some flair out with love, love, love.”

The world is grey, and for a second you think you are dying. Or dead. Everything seems frozen in place, the people on the sidewalk, Chloe reaching out for you, an expression of dread you have never seen before written across her face, the car as it hits you, the driver looking away in horror. You only see one person moving, in the distant, seemingly out of focus, shifting backwards, and forwards, through the crowds of Seattle, passing on the sidewalk. And then you feel it.

You had almost forgotten how it feels, like the world is running backwards, and you are the one playing the film in reverse. The power of it, the ache in your head, and your sinuses, and the hiss of voices overlapping again, and again. The knowledge that nothing is set in stone, and everything mutable. You are running time back on itself, the universe back on itself, pushing it backwards. The power is back.

You watch as you run backwards, and Chloe runs after you, the car zipping away from the place where it was going to kill you. Further, and further you go, as if the power had been building behind you all this time, ready to burst. You are inside, and the doors close, as your voices play out in reverse. You’re in the shower, and the water is running up, streaming off your skin into the showerhead, and then you are back, in bed, with her, all the way to the point where you woke up. There is a flash, as you push further, caught up in a spiral you cannot seem to control, or slow. The world almost seems to be tearing, or burning, like film in a projector. And then, just like that, it’s over.

“I’m here Max. I’m safe. You’re safe. Just breathe with me.”

You wake up in her arms. It’s early March, 2015, and you are safe with her. You feel yourself panting, and bury yourself into her chest, between her breasts, as deep as you can go, swallowing deep, gulping gasps of her scent like you nearly drowned. She’s real, and alive, and so are you, you remind yourself, over, and over, and over again. Keep her safe. Remember her smell.

“God, Chloe,” you say, as you start crying.

“Shhh, shh, baby,” she says, stroking your hair, “it’s okay. I’m here. We don’t have to talk. Just stay with me.”

For a second, you remember the car crashing into you, and then you force it out of your mind. You cannot burden her. You can’t tell her. You have to be strong, for her. Like always. Keep her safe, even from the knowledge of what almost happened. And if your power is back, then keep her safe from that too. Keep her safe from what you could do to hurt her, and whatever the universe might want to throw at the woman you love. Last time your power nearly killed her, and you had to fight time, the universe itself, to save her. No more. You need her alive, and you will never touch that power in you again, as long as you live. You will build a life with her, and you won’t rewrite one line of it.

“So why did you?” You ask, almost amazed that your voice sounds so lost, and so pathetically sad.

“Why didn’t I tell you back then? Because I didn’t want you to worry. Because I didn’t want you to think that the universe might kill you again, if I was reckless,” Max says, as you sit together on the edge of your bed.

“No,” you say, holding her gaze, “why did you use your powers again? And how many times?”

She sighs, heavily, but she continues.

“I’ll tell you, Chloe, and I’m sorry, in advance.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs Referenced:  
> -Love, Love, Love, by the Mountain Goats.
> 
> Other References:  
> -Annie on My Mind is a 1982 novel by Nancy Garden. It was one of if not the first depictions of a same gender relationship in a book for and about young adults.  
> -The Fremont Troll is a sculpture under a bridge in Seattle. In the nineties a man killed the driver of a moving bus on the bridge above, and in 2013 a dozen skinned sheep skulls were found nearby. This is also a reference to "Fremont, Washington," a bonus episode of the podcast Alice Isn't Dead.
> 
> Sorry this is a pretty heavy chapter. Next one will be really light, happy and fluffy, I promise. I mean, remember, Obergefell v. Hodges also happened in 2015.


	5. Glass Vase, Cello Case

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for minor references to trauma that happened in the game.

Glass Vase, Cello Case

It happens both slow and fast.

Slow in that you’ve always talked about it, even before the storm, before you left. A joke, at first, maybe? It’s hard to even say, now, in retrospect. You could say it was love at first sight, but your love for her now has changed the context of those past memories, you know. And then after the storm, after Arcadia Bay, it got worse. Or perhaps better, rather. The second kiss, the first night you spent together, on the road, more awkward than sexy, or romantic, you fumblingly explaining that no, you hadn’t been with someone in Seattle, or ever, and her first teasing you, then gently explaining what she wanted you to do with her body. After all that there were the jokes. Uhauls, right? That was the stereotype? You were only kids, and yet you were still talking about it, through the time with your parents, out to your studio apartment. Frequently. Constantly.

And fast in that you, personally, Max Caulfield, don’t see it coming.

It happens in the summer of 2015. You are getting home from therapy. It was...fine, you think, but you still want to tell Chloe that you’re stopping. It’s not that your therapist is bad, she’s great, and she’s taught you a lot of good coping skills. Grounding. Breathing. Stuff like that. Basic, reliable, useful skills. She understands that the Dark Room happened and the storm, and that people died. Trauma makes sense to her. But you can’t tell her that you were the storm. You caused it, by messing around with fate and time so much. You killed those people. You chose Chloe’s life over them.

And all that goes out the window when you step through your door. The moment you do Chloe is wrapping you up, in a huge bear hug, lifting you off the ground, and spinning you around. Then you’re down again and she’s kissing you. Hot. Heavy. Sexy. Passionate, like only she can be.

“Wowsers,” you say, and she wrinkles her nose at you in mock irritation, “what was that for?”

“Fuck me, Caulfield, don’t ruin this shit,” she says, still smiling. “They fucking legalized it.”

“What? Weed?”

“No, dork, us! Marriage, bruh, it’s hella gay now. Nationwide.”

“Oh, shit,” you say, trying to find words.

“Yeah, you know what this means now, babe?”

“Uhhh, that people can get married?”

“Shit, you’re such a dweeb Caulfield. It means we don’t just have to be partners in crime. We can be crives.”

This next part happens fast too, but you remember every single moment of it. It’s forever seared into the back of your mind, even as she treats it so casually. So much so that you will be able to recount every detail years later, telling this story, on the side of your bed. You will remember the way her hair fell around her face, the way she smiled, in that self-assured way she had, the way her arms looked, bare, where she is getting her old memento mori tattoo blacked out by a friend. You will remember how she looks as she gets down on one knee, holds your hand, and looks up at you.

“Fuck,” you mutter, almost speechless.

“It, uhh, is short for crime wives. Wives in crime. Wives in time. But, um, you know, don’t take it too seriously. It’s not like I wanna go to a courthouse, or even fucking have a ring or anything. Shit, I should probably have one, shouldn’t I? Sorry, poor impulse control, you know how it is.”

“Yes,” you say, and you feel yourself crying even as you say it.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she mutters, standing up and hugging you, “I screwed up. Sorry. Should’ve gotten a ring. Will next time.”

“No, you idiot,” you say, looking up and smiling, even as you cry, “yes.”

“Oh,” she says, realization spreading across her face, “right. Damn.”

That’s how it starts. That evening you both go to a celebration, in the streets, staying out late into the night, and early into the morning. She kisses you again, and again, and again, more than your first Pride together. Less than the first night you spent together, when she had to tell you to stick your tongue in her mouth. You stay out late, and a picture you take of the both of you, her kissing you, with a rainbow sticker on her cheek, and a bear kissing a twink behind you, will become one of your favorite pictures. But not your favorite. This is how it starts, but it is not how it ends.

After that you call her your wife, from time to time. Even straight people have started getting married without legal paperwork. You don’t tell your parents, and she doesn’t tell David, of course. But when it is just you, or sometimes when it is you and your photography friends from school, or shows, or when you go and hang out with her coworkers, and the stoner skaters she likes to practice her tricks with, then you are her wife.

That winter you stop therapy. She fights a bit, at first, but then you point out that she’s never been, and she drops it. Besides, you have your big road trip planned to see David. Your first road trip since after the storm, when you were wandering aimlessly across America, it seemed. In her pickup, of course.

You head south, down out of Seattle, through Oregon, into California, and further on down the coast. You stop at every tourist trap, and every roadside attraction you can find, as the cold weather of the winter break gives way to hot southern warmth. At Cape Disappointment Chloe takes a picture of you looking out at a little black boat floating down on the water, and you don’t have the heart to tell her it’s horrible. You just kiss her, run your hand through her long hair, down to the ends where the blue you first kissed her with has faded to green, and tell you you love her. Because you do.

It’s by the shores of the Salton Sea, not far from Slab City, East Jesus, and Salvation Mountain that you take what will become your favorite picture of you both, so much so that you will make copies, give one to David, and keep one on your wall, years later, when you move to a new city, and a new apartment with your wife. It will sit there, next to the one of you at the party, the one Chloe took of you, and the older pictures, from before the storm, when you were just friends, figuring out the world together.

You take it at arm’s length, not your best work, but it is honest. It’s in the desert, and behind you you see cacti. You are smiling, of course, your hair slept past your ear, no more bangs. But what you love the most is her. The flowers rising above the angry black tattoos she has gotten, blotting out the past, like they are rising from the ashes of everything that came before. It’s the last picture you have with her old dyed hair, the last lingering traces of Arcadia Bay. She’s so cool, but still Chloe, and the next day she will impulsively cut it all off, but that moment is perfect.

Two days later you are driving inland, looking at that picture, and then at her, with her hair shorter and all light brown now, listening to the Dead Kennedys on her radio. You sit in the passenger seat, looking from her, to the picture, and back. And you remember that you have power. That you could go back to that moment, that perfect picture, if you wanted to. Relive it. And suddenly you are terrified.

What if you did? You can still feel the power out there, spiraling out around you. If it does build up, over time, then who knows what you could do? And that is what scares you. Because who knows what you could screw up? Go back to Arcadia Bay, never meet her, and so much more. Never meet her in the first place? Never go back to Arcadia Bay? You have built a life with her. Are building a life with her, and you don’t want to lose it. You can’t. You can’t fucking lose her, because if you do, then all of what you went through, all the alternate Max’s, abandoned across the timelines, all of what you saw in the Dark Room, and never talked about with your therapist, because how could you talk about something that never happened? All that will be for nothing. You cannot leave her. Cannot live without her. Never. Chloe and Max, forever.

“Let’s get married,” you say, interrupting the punk band screaming about just who can fuck off.

“Of course babe, you’re my wife,” she says, flashing you a smile. “And besides, if you ever need to divorce me, no hard feelings. I’ll be an excellent divorcee. Have a midlife crisis, run off with my secretary, and get a muscle car.”

“No,” you say, more hurt by her joke than you would’ve thought, “seriously. Like, legal and shit. Marry me, Chloe Price.”

“Shit,” she says, before slamming on the breaks, and for a moment you hold out your hand, ready to keep her safe, but she just pulls over on the dusty side of the road, and turns and looks at you. “You for real, Caulfield?”

“Cereal,” you say, staring her dead in the eyes.

She stares back at you, and you are scared, for just a moment, that she will say no. Or that her temper will flare up. She is still Chloe after all, even without the dyed hair, with all her bite, and venom. But that moment passes, and suddenly she is grinning wider than you think you’ve seen her smile before.

“Dork,” she grins. “Fuck me, I can’t believe I’m going to marry such a lame hipster idiot. Who even talks like that?”

“So you will marry me?” You ask, tears filling your eyes.

“Of fucking course I will, kitten. Now come here and let me kiss you, Maxine Price-Caulfield.”

It takes a lot to keep her serious, as you throw the preparations together over the course of a few days. She floats the idea of getting married by an Elvis impersonator, a man in a Hawt Dawg Man suit, by a cheerleader, and more before you find a lady who will do it for cheap on short notice. You stop at a thrift store and pick out a dress, black, worn out, simple, and she gets a white pair of slacks with a matching vest. You think it is about the hottest she has ever looked. She calls ahead, makes sure that David and one of his friends will be there, and leaves you the hard task of telling your parents.

“Yes, dad, I am going to marry her. Tomorrow. End of story. Why?” You say, and try to put into words what she means to you. Your best friend. Your rock. The best and most beautiful thing in your world. Pirate queen. The only person who knows what really happened in Arcadia Bay, and has been there every morning since, holding you. You fail. “‘Cause I love her and I want to.”  
The next day you get married.

It’s tiny. The middle of the desert. Simple. Just you, David, the minister, David’s friend, and Chloe. She’s more beautiful than anything you’ve ever seen before. David keeps crying, talking about how proud Joyce would be of you both, and for once Chloe doesn’t stop him. She just hugs him, says she knows, that she loves him, and then, just like that, the minister is asking if you have any vows.

“Uhhh, yeah,” Chloe says, clearing her throat, “umm, Max. Maxine. Maxinalia. I, uhh. First, holy hell you are hot. And, well, you know. The universe gave this...moment to you. And me, I guess. You make me laugh and smile like no one else alive. Before you I didn’t think I was even worthy of love, but you loved every part of me. The worst, and roughest parts of me. You are my best friend, and I would trade five minutes with you for five years without. I, uhh, promise you, that it’ll be you and I together. Forever. Until the end of time.”

You feel yourself already crying, as you look up at her, imagining you and her on a cliff, overlooking Arcadia Bay.

“Chloe, I…” you begin, choke, and start again, “you are the most important thing in the world. My pirate queen. My punk. I would never trade away one, single, solitary moment with you. You have loved me when we went through things no one ever should have to go through. I choose you, every single day, and I never regret it. I will be with you, forever, until the end of time too.”

You kissed her then. Probably ranked up there among the five most passionate, most pure kisses ever. You felt her lips, on yours, and your tears, and hers too, as she bent down, wrapped her hand around the back of your head, and pulled you into her. That moment was perfect. The warmth of her. The reality. The safety. That heartbeat behind the heat of her lips that you would protect, keep alive, and cherish, for ever. She would never leave, if you had anything to do with it.

Then you were pulling apart, and she was laughing and crying at the same time, as she wiped her hands.

“I swear to god Max, you had better not say wowsers,” she says. “Oh fuck this is embarassing.”

You love her so much in that moment. For just one second you think about that power, and rewinding, just to live out that perfect moment again. But no, you think, with a smile, as you hug her. This is your life, and hers too, that you are building together. You will not erase one single line of it.

“Why are you telling me this, Max?” You say, looking at her, as the day wears on, and the sun starts descending towards the horizon outside your apartment windows.

You’re laying on your back, on your bed, staring up at the fan spinning overhead. You keep on spinning your ring around your finger, over and over again, and you're guessing that she's doing the same, even if you don't look. It’s all too much, and you don’t know how to deal with it. Fucking shit. Why does this all fucking make sense? It’s almost like you can feel the rewinds, the things she has taken back, and rewritten. The power spiralled inside her. You really wish you hadn’t given up weed.

“Because I wanted you to know, Chloe.”

“Yeah, no shit. I remember our wedding. Why tell me about it?”

“Because I wanted you to know I didn’t rewind. I didn’t take a single moment back, or rewrite it.”

“Fine, sure,” you say, feeling a headache growing, as you close your eyes. “But I know you would eventually. Tell me how, Max. And how many times. What did you rewrite? Finish your story.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song References:  
> -Glass Vase, Cello Case by Tattle Tale, the theme of the perennial lesbian classic, "But I'm a Cheerleader."  
> -Nazi Punks Fuck Off, by the Dead Kennedys.
> 
> Other References:  
> -The Princess Bride  
> -Alice Isn't Dead, "Mouth of the Water."
> 
> I am very soft, and very gay. Cheering for the wives in time. Added some more tags to the work and hey! I know how many chapters this is gonna be now. Maybe it'll actually be the first fic I finish. Enjoy!


	6. What Sarah Said

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for alcohol, reclaimed slurs, and discussion of death and suicide.

What Sarah Said

The end of 2016 is when she starts falling apart.

You’re still living in Seattle, in your studio apartment. Things are going well for you, close to your degree, getting pictures into little galleries, art shows, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, as far as you can tell, she stops talking to you. Well, she keeps talking, but she stops telling you what she’s going through. You have to figure it out yourself, as the holidays approach.

She’s smoking more, and drinking too, late into the night. Her sleep gets erratic, and her teeth, and her bite return with a vengeance. On her days off she disappears for hours and hours at a time. When she does she doesn’t answer her phone no matter how many annoying emojis you send. And when she returns she brings trash back with her, stuff from dumpsters, a t-shirt that says “I Tego Arcana Dei,” on it. Things you don’t understand, but must be forming a pattern, somehow, right?

“Chloe, baby,” you say, on New Year’s Eve, as you watch the ball drop on your shitty laptop, “we need to talk. You need to talk about what you’re going through, or I can’t help you, love.”

“Holidays are just bullshit,” she says with a snort, her head in your lap. “That’s fucking all, Max.”

“I really don’t think so,” you insist, rubbing her scalp, ignoring your hypocrisy. “Please, don’t hide things from me. I’m your wife.”

“You know how it was, going to your family’s for the holidays?” she retorts, sitting up, and looking at you. 

“Fine?”

“No! Not fucking fine, Max. You’re sitting there, talking about your galleries, and the jobs you have lined up after graduation, and I fuck reek of weed, and motor oil. You’re fucking sitting there all happy and sophisticated and all I can fucking think about is how I’m a piece of shit from a piece of shit town you nearly got away from. You nearly escaped, and I dragged you back down. And you’re talking to your parents and I can’t stop thinking about my,” she pauses, catches her breath, her eyes wet, “and I can’t stop thinking about my dad, and about Rachel. About my mom. Joyce died in a shitty diner. Everyone fucking leaves, and maybe you will too. You should. You should’ve saved the town. Not your punk-ass dyke wife.”

“Chloe, I…” you begin, and you can’t find the words.

It hurts. She is hurting, and she’s lashing out, hurting you. You need to keep her safe. Fix this. You raise your hand, for a moment, and then put it down. You can’t take back, or forget her words. Instead you have to find some way of telling her that you chose her. You want her. And that all the guilt, all the terrible things you see in your dreams, are on your shoulders. That you want to always save her, time after time.

“Yeah,” she snorts, grabbing her coat from the floor, “that’s what I fucking thought. I’m going out, Max.”

“Out?” You ask, remembering the day your powers came back.

“Out,” she says, staring at you, before suddenly slamming the door behind her.

“Happy New Year,” the television says.

She keeps waking you up in the morning, reassuring you that she is safe and so are you, when the dreams come back. But she stops calling you when she’s at work. You go to your classes, and photo shoots, and text her little messages about your day, and what you're doing, and she stops replying. She stays out late, and if it were anyone other than Chloe, her fiercely territorial self, you’d be suspicious. Instead you are just worried, as she shuts down more, and more.

The first time you decide to do something is late in February. She is gone, it is late, and you are restlessly cleaning your tiny apartment, over, and over, trying to figure out where you went wrong. You open a drawer in your tiny kitchen corner, where you are both teaching yourselves how to cook, and something small and round rattles out. You look at it. Chloe’s pills, last refilled late in the fall. The seal is unbroken.

Well, fuck.

She gets home late, long after you have fallen asleep, worn out by near constant worry and fatigue. In a weird way you’re more scared because she doesn’t reek of cheap beer and weed. It would be one thing if she were going out on a bender, but this is something else. On instinct you slide across your bed, making room for her. But she does not fall down next to you, on the outside of your back, keeping you sheltered from what dreams may come, where your body fits so neatly next to yours. She does not do that, which she has done since the first day, in the motel, a few miles outside of Arcadia Bay. Instead she flops into bed, and you feel nothing but a void on your back, where she should be.

You stay there, facing away from her, listening to her breathe, for a long time. She’s not asleep. And if she knows you, and the way you sleep, like she said in the conversation you took away from her, then she knows you are not asleep either. And she knows you very well. You lay there, the thin strip of bed separating you in and her seeming to grow wider, and more threatening, and the silence between you seems to likewise grow more menacing, more full of dangers, as the quiet stretches on. Finally you cannot bear it any more. You roll over, and look at your wife.

She fully dressed. Skinny jeans. Suspenders. Beanie. Boots. The moonlight and the streetlight streaming in through your grimy window illuminate her perfectly. If you could take a picture of her, if she were just a model you didn’t know, a stranger, it would be perfect. But she’s not, is she? She’s a human, and your wife, and you know her more than anything else, and you know that something is horribly, horribly wrong. And you have to choose how you are going to protect her.

“What’s up, babe?” You lead with.

“Nothing,” she retorts, shutting you down before the conversation even begins, “don’t bother me.”

She rolls away from you, putting her back to you for the first time ever, and for a moment you regret every second you spent in Seattle, away from her. And the worst part is you know Chloe. More than anyone else alive. Something is very, very wrong and she is shutting down, shutting you out, and not telling you something. You must have chosen a word wrong, somehow, you think.

And just like that the idea comes storming back into your mind, almost like someone put it there. Like they are manipulating you. Feeding you your next course of action, or determining what linear choices you can make. You try to push it out of your mind, and forget about the power you feel spiraling out around you, as you open your mouth, and speak to her, reaching across to lay a hand on her shoulder.

“Chloe, don’t shut me down like this.”

“Like what, Max?” She says, suddenly standing up, almost bolting out of bed. “Like you personally can save me? Well guess fucking what, despite all your education, and your high hopes, I’m still a piece of shit, and you can’t change that. I’m going out.”

She stomps towards the door, and you, desperately, call after her, as you lay there in your nightgown.

“Out where?”

“You don’t fucking know, Max? Figure it out then. Out.”

Years later, as you tell this story to her, when she is calmer, has been to therapy, and is on medication, you will try to justify what you do next. I was worried about you, you will say. I didn’t want you to get hurt, and I didn’t know where you were going, or what you were going to do. She will stare at you, until you tell her the truth. You don’t know why you do what you do. But if you had to guess, it would be because as you watch her walking out that door, right then, you feel like you’re watching her dad walking out the door to his house. You feel like she’s leaving you, and you can’t deal with never seeing her again.

You raise your hand, and feel the power course through you, strong and hungry, like it has been building behind a dam all these years, waiting to be unleashed, to destroy everything downriver. But you are in charge, you remind yourself, and it will not run away from you. You restrain yourself, slow down the reverse, as Chloe walks backwards, back into bed, and you get a chance to choose another path in your conversation, heading down another of the infinitely branching paths of the universe, leaving another Max behind you as you do.

“Nothing,” she says again, “don’t bother me.”

She rolls away from you, once again, and for a moment you regret what you’ve done. You should tell her. But you are worried about her, right? You want to protect her, to keep her safe, even from the knowledge that you are once again meddling with the path the universe takes. You can’t make her worry about that too. You will tell her this, years later, and she will not believe you.

“I know you stopped taking your pills,” you say again.

“Dear fucking god,” she says, suddenly bolting out of your bed again, leaving you feeling cold and alone, “I fucking thought I moved out of David’s house. That that whole fucking town got levelled. Don’t interrogate me like him, Max.”

“I’m just worried about you, Chloe,” you plead. “Your meds, drinking. Weed can mess with people with mental illness. And where are you going, even, at night?”

“To the train tracks,” she says, flipping you the bird, “to play chicken with them. Fuck off and leave me.”

You don’t hesitate this time. You have too much self respect to lie about that. You hold your hand out, and for just a second she sees the motion, and a look of recognition and betrayal flashes across her beautiful face. And then you are reversing time, and she is in bed again, and you are making another choice, as she rolls away from you.

“The train tracks, Chloe?” You say, gently, and this time she does not get out of bed, or shy away from you touching her shoulder.

“Shit, yeah,” she mutters. “How did you know?”

“I know you very well. What are you doing out there?”

She pauses, a long, long time, looking away from you, as you inch closer to her, until you are the one protecting her from the world. It takes you a minute to hear the sobs, the primal, almost screaming sound worming its way out of her mouth, as she starts to cry, and speak through the tears.

“I don’t even fucking know. Hoping a goddamn train hits me, I guess. Ends my stupid, miserable life.”

“Don’t say those things, Chloe,” you say firmly. “Would you ever let me say something like that about myself?”

“No, ‘cause you’re stupid perfect. You deserve so, so much better than to be married to some piece of shit, washed up skater dyke who can’t even get out of her own goddamn head. You should be going to galleries, and spending time with rich assholes, not some punk like me in a shithole like this apartment. You deserve better, just like Joyce, and David, and everyone who died in that shithole town. They all deserved better than me. You should’ve picked them, Max. The universe wanted me to die, and maybe it was right.”

You don’t say anything. Not yet. Later you will tell her that she is wrong, again, and again, and again. You will tell her that you chose her, and continue to choose her every day. You will get her to go to therapy, and get help, and turn things around. You will convince her to talk about William, about Arcadia Bay, and everything else. But right then, on that horrible night, you simply hold her, and tell her you will love her, until the end of time.

“Damn,” you say, rubbing your hands across your face, “now I really wish you hadn’t convinced me to stop smoking.”

The sun has set. You are still in your apartment, you laying on your bed, her sitting on the edge, not even looking at you as she explains what really happened.

“Chloe, love, I’m sorry,” she mumbles.

“Wait, you’re not done yet. ‘Cause that night is one of the ones I always remember. You holding me and all that shit. Couldn’t stand to watch me die on a train track again. So you had to do a bunch of time travel bullshit to get me to go to therapy. Whatever. Fuck, I mean, what are we gonna do about that now? What happened after?”

“Nothing,” she says, her voice almost inaudible, “I mean, like, nothing you don’t know about. I graduated. We moved. You got your job, I got mine, you went back to school, I joined the union. That stuff.”

“So you’re telling me, Max, that between that night and when I caught you, or, like, shit, remembered you doing all of that, you didn’t turn back time even once?”

She glances at you, opens her mouth, closes it again, and turns away. Like she can’t even look you in the eyes.

“No,” she says, finally. “I turned it back once in 2018, when a wasp stung you. I thought it was funny. But until the...until this year I didn’t touch it again. I still remember all those promises. I didn’t want to rewrite the story.”

“And then what?”

“Then the pandemic!” She says, suddenly finding her voice again. “Then I had to keep you safe. I had to keep you away from people who might be sick. I can’t lose you. Not again. I can’t Chloe. I can’t watch you die, I know that from first hand experience. Do you realize that? I watched you die, and I love you too much to do that again. Especially alone. I can’t let you die without me there.”

“How many times?”

“Enough.”

“How,” you say, hating your rising voice, “many fucking times did you reverse time, Maxine?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Shit, goddamn, piss fuck,” you say, collapsing back into your bed. “You did it that much around me? No fucking wonder I started to recognize the motion.”

“Please don’t be mad at me,” she says, begging, no, pleading with you.

“I have every right to be mad,” you retort. “But fuck, you were the one who convinced me to go to therapy, and my therapist hella loves to talk about being deliberate. So this is really me trying to control myself, you know? Rein in a bit of the bite and venom of old Chloe. But I am still mad.”

“Do you love me?”

“Max, I’m your goddamn wife. I will love you always. You and me, remember? But I can be mad at you too. Shit,” you say, closing your eyes, as the full weight of what you are about to say hits you.

“So what happens now?” She says, weakly, dejected, defeated.

“Now? Now I think I might need a little space from you, Max.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song References:  
> -What Sarah Said, by Death Cab for Cutie.
> 
> A reminder that despite this, and the next two chapters, this story is still going to have a happy ending, I swear.


	7. We're Breaking Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: Depressive thoughts.

We’re Breaking Up

You slept on the couch last night, and your back is killing you, as you load up your things into your old pickup. It’ll need to carry you all the way down south to David’s, but it has a new engine, a new coat of paint, and pretty much everything in it you’ve torn out and rebuilt. You load your guitar in, your clothes, and your too plants. And then there’s nothing else to load, and you have to actually face this shitty part of this morning.

Jesus fucking Christ, if only our back would cooperate. You never fucking thought you’d be old enough to get back issues. And it’s not bad. But still, it’s probably not going to get any better. Hopefully you don’t lose your hearing, you think, as you listen to your punk music, blasting on your headphones. The punk music keeps out the thought that is clawing in the back of your mind, and has been there since she told you the truth.

“This is the only voice I know, these are the only words I have,” you hear, before you pull them out of your ears, and turn to face the music.

You walk back up the stairs to your apartment, take off your mask, and give it all one more loop through. You see your bed, still a wreck from last night. You see her wall of pictures, from the old ones in Seattle, the ones she keeps of her and her parents in a restaurant, where she apparently told them she wanted to go back to Arcadia Bay, the one from your trip, before your wedding, next to the one you took to her artsy photo shoots. Your room is so familiar. You’ve woken up here so many mornings, you think, next to her and happy. You will miss it, you realize. You shake your head, step out, and find her sitting on the couch, hugging herself, gently rocking back and forth.

She doesn’t look up, as you sit down next to her, and gently put an arm around her shoulders.

“We’re not breaking up, Max. I’m still your wife, and I still love you. I just need some space.”

“When do you think you’ll be back from David’s?” She says with a sniff, as she rubs her nose.

“I’m not sure, baby. I’ll probably spend some time down there talking with him, and helping him with his stupid solar panels. Whatever else he needs. And you and I will talk, baby, and figure things out. I’ll call in the evenings.”

“Okay. I’m still sorry for what I did.”

“Me too,” you say.

“Although, Chloe, I swear if you get it I’m never going to forgive myself,” she says, looking down at her hands.

“Don’t worry. I’m no stranger to peeing on the side of the road. I won’t use any rest stops, and I’ll keep on going ‘til I get to his place.”

“Overnight?”

“Nah, I’ll sleep in the back of my truck. I used to do it before you. Don’t worry about me, baby, I’ll be fine.”

She sniffs, and a long moment of silence stretches between you two. She stays there, and then, like instinct, leans her head across to your shoulder, and rests it on you. You sigh, and let her. It’s comforting. You like being her butch, with her long brown hair, and your shaved head. You love her. Fully and completely. She makes you laugh, and cry, and sticks with you through everything. She wanted to keep you safe, but she still took it too far. You will miss her, though, terribly.

“I do like your hair, though,” she says, offhandedly, like she’s trying to find something to fill the void, even as she seems to know your deepest thoughts.

“Yeah, me too.”

“Do you still love me?”

“I do love you. Until the end of time, Max. I promised. And I still do promise, ever single day.”

“And you’ll be back?”

“Yes,” you sigh.

For one second more she holds you, her hand on your back, and rubbing against your shaved head, and you can close your eyes, and feel your wife against you. She is so close, so warm, and so tiny. She needs to eat more. Despite everything she means so, so much to you. She is your best friend, and your wife. You can almost feel the power in that word, just like you can feel the power spiraling out of her. She’s still your Max.

“Did you really remember me using my power?”

“Yeah,” you say, extricating yourself from her, “kinda weird I know, but it felt like a memory at least. I should be going, Max. We can’t put this off forever with small talk. I have to go.”

“Wait,” she says, reaching out a hand towards you, and you flinch towards it, but no rewind happens. “I love you, Chloe. Forever. And I’ll keep you safe. No matter what happens, I promise.”

“Take care of yourself first, Max,” you say, shaking your head, “you can’t always be protecting me, and forgetting yourself.

“Okay. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

And just like that you are leaving. It feels off, and unreal. Almost like you are looking at the world through some artsy grey filter Max would use for one of her photo shoots. You go down to your pick up, wave up at her, as she stands in the doorway to your apartment. And then you are pulling out of your parking space, onto the road and away from her, your wife, for the first time since the storm. You are leaving your home, and it is not your bedroom. She is your home, and wherever she is you want to be as well. If you were anyone else you might cry, but instead, as you wind through the city streets, and then out onto the interstate, you turn on your speakers and blast Against Me!

“And it’s the same way that it’s always been,” LJG sings, “the dynamic to the relationship never changes.”

You zone out, listening to your punk music, as you head south, speeding down the interstate, and onto side highways, before getting onto smaller and smaller back roads. Stay home, signs on the side of the road tell you, stay safe. Well you would, fucking signs, you think, flipping them off, except for your wife took away your agency. She’s your home, and your love, and you still needed space from her. You needed so much space that you’d move in with your step-father. And as the hours pass, and you move on, eating your snacks, stopping to piss on the side of the road, you can’t help but lose yourself in your thoughts.

You’re pissed. You know that much. You’re pissed at Max. She lied to you, and she removed your choices, rewound and rewrote your life without your consent. But at the same time you still love her, just as much as you always have. It’s a contradiction. One you aren’t sure how to resolve. She wanted to protect you. It was only a few times. But that doesn’t make it okay. Would David have advice? And just how fucked up does a thing have to be that she’s willing to ask him for advice in her love life?

And still, despite being pissed, your thoughts keep circling back to the same dark place. You know your therapist would hate it, and that they would have all sorts of harsh words for you. But you still have those thoughts anyway. You can’t stay away from Max. Not for long, at least, you know that. You want her in your life, and you know that each morning you wake up you will want to be with her, until you leave David’s and return to her. And at the same time you are still you. Self-destructive, full of blood, and foam, and bad decisions. Impulsive. Traumatized. Chloe. Because of all that, and because she is Max, and has spent years keeping you safe, Max will always want to defend you. Max will always be burdening herself, keeping her secrets, and trying to protect her wife, trying to protect you, even if it kills her.

The thought is hard to escape, lurking in the back of her mind, like it always has. You try again and again to push it down, and forget about it, as it claws at the back of your brain. Remember, she chose you. She continues to choose you. You have therapy, right? You talk through this shit. You’re on medication. You are building a life together. You don’t have to feel this way, or think these things.  
Eventually you stop, in the middle of nowhere, and pull over on the side of the road. The Milky Way, and the planets, and the stars arch overhead, and farmland stretches out around you, away on all sides of you, fading into the night. No one is around. You are utterly and completely alone. The road is quiet. You grab a pillow, and lay down in the bed of the pick up, looking at the stars, and the full moon sailing through them.

You miss her. You will always miss her, you know. This is the first time you have ever slept apart from her. The first after the bad years, before the storm, when she had left you for Seattle, before she came back and saved you from the universe itself. You can’t leave her. You’re not even near strong enough to do that, you know. And she wants to protect you. She won’t leave you, even if she betrayed your trust, and manipulated time itself around you. The conclusion is inescapable, and with it you finally entertain the thought that has been clawing up the back of your neck all day.

She should have chosen to save Arcadia Bay instead.

You sigh. It shouldn’t be on your mind. But it is. What a mess. Eventually, however, you feel yourself growing tired. You are way, way too sleepy to think about this tonight. Tomorrow, then, you’ll call Max, and start to fix things between you. What a mess. You miss her. You hope she’s okay. What is she thinking about, right now? What is she doing? Does she miss you the same way that you miss her?  
You do not see it, as you fall asleep, but overhead, the full moon passes. You toss and turn, uncomfortably resting in the back of the truck bed, as the world shifts, imperceptibly. And as it shifts, a figure approaches you, in the truck. It shifts, back and forth, like it is made of static. A void cut out of the world, or something else trying to force itself in. It speaks, although you are not awake to hear that it’s voice is familiar. One you have heard before.

“Some things you’ll do for money, and some you’ll do for fun, but the things you do for love are going to come back to you one by one. What do we have left in common, Chloe? Just shared memories of good times long since gone.”

And then it is gone. You shift again, and in your sleep call out for your wife. No one answers. You are alone. But as you call out, in the middle of a horribly dream, before the world changes, you startle the herd of deer that are passing by. As they run away from you one pauses, and looks up at the sky. It does not understand what it is seeing, as two full moons pass high overhead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs Referenced:  
> -We're Breaking Up, by Against Me!  
> -Autoclave, by the Mountain Goats.  
> -Love, Love, Love, by the Mountain Goats.
> 
> Oh boy everyone. Remember that tag up there, that this is gonna get weird? It's about to happen. Strap in for a ride and remember there will be a happy ending.


	8. Don't Forget to Breath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: for depressive thoughts, and timeline altering. Sorry. If any of these chapters are too heavy feel free to skip them, and I'll summarize them for you. No worries.

Don’t Forget to Breathe

You watch her drive away from you, close your door, walk to your bedroom, lie down, and cry.

The crying doesn’t make anything better, of course. How could it, when she’s not around to hold you, and reassure you that it will all be okay? How could it be when you are lying in your bed, her bed, the bed of a married couple and she is not there beside you, laughing at one of her own jokes, or smiling as she brushes a hand through your hair. Or just sleeping, and quietly breathing beside you?

But even so, your body can only sustain the effort of crying so long. Crying has to end, despite all the power, sadness, guilt and shame mingling inside your chest, where normally your love for her lives. Eventually you’re dehydrated, have a headache, and are hiccuping on your bed, still missing Chloe.

You don’t eat that day. How can you? You have a union meeting, and a work meeting, and a meeting with some other photographers, trying to figure out some way of doing a shoot with social distancing. All on your computer, of course. You miss them all. They are completely unimportant compared to her, and what you have done to her, how you, personally, Max, have hurt her. Outside the world seems to turn around you, as you lay on your bed, look at your phone, see that she has not texted, go to your couch, and drift back and forth in your apartment, alone with your thoughts.

Almost alone. For a second, you feel like there is someone else there. Something else. Pushing close, drifting towards and away from you. But you push it out of your mind as a sensation only caused by hunger and fear and sadness.

You screwed up. You know that. You should never have messed with time. You were too eager to protect her, and because of that you ended up hiding things from her. You lied to her, by omission. You broke her trust. For years. It all went wrong, and it’s your fault. It’s almost, you think, between bouts of migraines, and nosebleeds, as if her life would have been better without you in it.

You stop. She is a good person. She has been screwed over by the universe. She’s a traumatized queer kid from a shitty town. She deserves to be alive. You chose her. You cannot undo that choice, even if it wracks you with guilt. You saved her life. She deserves to live. But at the same time, ever since then you’re just been hurting her, and been a burden. You try to stop yourself.

But your train of thought continues, as evening nears. It grows, and grows, like a cancer. Almost as if someone is whispering in your ear, something is guiding you towards a select ending, that it desires. But you are still thinking what it wants, and feel the dark idea growing inside you.

Chloe deserves to be alive. She has to be alive. You have to protect her. From everything, including yourself. And if you have to protect her from yourself, then you have to face up to the huge amount of her life you have screwed up. She should live, and survive Arcadia Bay. Death was all over that town, but it must never touch her. And you should not have touched her life, either.

And just like that you find your eyes dragged up to the wall of pictures, hanging over your bed. Your life, laid out in front of you like a map. Your life and Chloe’s. Tied together. Her picture of you. Your picture before your wedding. Your picture at your wedding. You and her after Obergefell. Every single picture hurts like someone is stabbing you in your heart, reminding you of her, and how much you love her. It hurts because all through that life, and that love, that you hurt her, and you know it. And worse, it’s a reminder that she loves you. And she deserves better.

And you need to protect her, from anything that might hurt her. Even if that thing that hurt her is you.

You feel your power spiraling out away from you into whatever strange infinities it came from. And you can feel yourself connecting the dots. It can’t all be a coincidence, can it? You feel your head pulsing, almost rhythmically. Your powers cannot be a coincidence. How strong it has grown, in the years, like a storm building inside you, that can’t be a coincidence. You got them. Some old god of Arcadia Bay, some being beyond your understanding, the universe itself, whatever it was that gave you this power, had to do it for a reason. It had to come back for a reason. I Tego Arcana Dei, you think. Begone, I guard the secrets of god. Was your power the secret? But at the same time it is an anagram. Et in Arcadia Ego.

And I too, am in Arcadia. Your thoughts race, like they are hungry, almost ravenous, as you come to the very conclusion you dread the most. Arcadia, a place of blissful harmony, supposedly, you remember from your schooling, and the I in the quote referring to Death. If death is still in paradise, and if your relationship with Chloe is a little piece of heaven on Earth, then you are death in it. You were Death in Arcadia Bay. You are the problem, here, and you need to remove yourself from Chloe’s life.

You take a picture off the wall, and look at it. You have not done this in years. You have not done this since you tore up the picture by the lighthouse, and promised to be with Chloe forever. But you feel it, still, like you are touching a tiny sliver of time, and diving into the spiral of it.

Outside, it is dark. It is night. It has come upon you. You do not look outside, as you start to cry, and silently curse yourself, and apologize again, and again to your wife. This is for the best, you tell yourself. You will carry this weight, and she won’t have too. Wrapped up in yourself, you do not see the twin moons, full and pale, high above the world. The power comes back to you, naturally, like something else is guiding you to it, coaxing you along some preordained path, and then it happens.

You dive in, and focus, and are in the past.

It’s easy, you think, as you find yourself in the little restaurant, year, and years ago, in Seattle.Your parents are across the from you. Looking at you, when you were just a teenager, before the storm.

“Mom, Dad, forget it,” you say, remembering how this conversation went the first time, “I don’t want to go back to Blackwell.”

Around you the world blurs, like film tearing, as you exist in this little pocket of time, altering the fate of the universe, changing destiny, and leaving behind yet another Max. And leaving behind a version of Chloe, you know. In your mind, you apologize, as, at the edges of your vision you see a figure flitting in and out of focus, like it is made of static, some hole cut out of the world. Or, perhaps, it occurs to you, the imprint of something else trying to push its way in.

But you can’t end there. As the edges blur, and burn, in the past, you know what you have to do. You are here to save Chloe. To protect her from you. And at the same time you cannot let her die. And without you there, without you in Arcadia Bay, Nathan Prescott will kill her. You need to do only one thing. Send a message. Send a text.

“Nathan Prescott will have a gun in the girl’s room. Don’t trust him.”

And just like that, you let your hold on time slip, as you fall back towards whatever present your changes to the past will have made. You have saved her from you. She won’t remember you, as anything other than her friend. Arcadia Bay, her mom, everyone else will live. And you will never betray her trust. And she’ll live.

You did it.

And in front of you, you see a figure, made of static, smiling, for just a second. She looks familiar, you think, as the white void swallows you up. Happy, eager. You did what the figure wanted.

And for a second you are very, very afraid of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs Referenced:  
> -Breath, by Alexi Murdoch.
> 
> Other References:  
> -Et in Arcadia Ego is a Latin phrase translated as "And I too am in Arcadia." Arcadia is a region in Greece that was supposedly idyllic, almost a heaven on Earth. The I in the quote is commonly thought to refer to death. Thus, it is saying that death is present even in the happiest of times. I Tego Arcana Dei is an anagram of this phrase.
> 
> Short, heavy, weird chapter. Sorry :/
> 
> Although in fairness I think the next will probably be one of if not the longest chapters in the fic? Stick around.


	9. I'm Not an Identity Crisis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for mentions of death, guns, interpersonal violence, and homophobic slurs.

I’m Not an Identity Crisis

Something is wrong.

You wake up with a start, your head throbbing like someone is hitting it with a hammer, and something is wrong.

Things seem different, but you can’t put your finger on why, particularly. Why did you think you’d be outside, in your pickup, when you woke? The sunlight pours through the windows of your RV. And something is wrong. What can’t you remember? What the fuck is it, skirting around the edge of your memory. What is wrong?

“Chloe, what the fuck is going on?” A tired female voice says from the other side of your bed, and something is very wrong.

You look at her. Blonde hair. Long, horrible hangover, by the look of it. She’s a wreck, and on some hardcore drugs, by the weathering on her face. And under all that time, mileage, and withering, you fucking recognize her, as she sprawls out, naked in your bed, just inches from you.

“Victoria? Victoria fucking Chase?”

“No shit, Sherlock,” she groans, as she rolls over, “not so fucking loud.”

“Where,” you pause, trying to find the right words at the edge of your mind, “where the fuck is Max?”

And just like that your life comes flooding back to you, in a rush, all your memories. Something is very, very wrong, with you, with the world, and with everything. You remember Max, and your life, and her, and your wedding, and David, and the Salton Sea, and everything else. You remember her lying, and you leaving, and falling asleep in your truck. And now you woke up...here.  
Where the fuck is here?

It looks familiar. An RV somewhere, with sunlight streaming in. It reeks. Max would hate it, given how much she likes to clean. Alcohol, weed, piss, and worse all mixing together. Clothes, bottles, and glass lie everywhere on the floor. Pictures of shirtless dudes in cowboy hats plastered over the walls, next to labels from beer packages. And Victoria fucking Chase naked next to you, in bed. What the fuck?

“Who?”

“Max! Maxine fucking Caulfield. Maxine fucking Price-Caulfield,” you shout throwing the sheets off you, and realizing to your horror that you are naked too. “My goddamn fucking wife.”

“Fuck you, Price,” Victoria says, not bothering to look at you, as she flips you the bird, and you pull on a pair of basketball shorts over your hairy legs. “Do I fucking look like I care if you got married in prison? I just came here last night for a good fuck in the middle of the pandemic, not your personal shit.”

“Wait,” you say, almost freezing as you pull on a tank top. “Prison? I was in prison? When?”

“Did you fucking drop some acid before I woke up or something?” She says, finally looking at you with bloodshot eyes. “Is this a bad trip? You went to prison after you shot and nearly killed Nathan. Only got out ‘cause of this stupid corona, and came back here. I don’t give a fuck why. Now leave me the fuck alone as I come down from last night.”

You don’t say anything, as you realize where you’ve seen this RV before. You turn, walk towards the door, and open it, stepping out into the blinding light of day. Gulls fly overhead, and you feel the salt wind wash across you, as waves crash in front of you. As your eyes adjust to the sudden light, you see where you are. On the beach.

The dread sinks deep into the core of your being, as you drag your face up to the headland above you, where you see a familiar lighthouse. You know it, and, almost knowing what you will find, you turn around, and find a little city on the shore spread out in front of you. Arcadia Bay. Undamaged. Undestroyed.

“What the fuck?” You mutter, under your breath.

“Are you coming back?” Victoria yells. “I could go again, you know. I got fucking needs, and I thought you were supposed to be this big, fucking, manly dyke who could give them to me, you know?”

You are lost in a haze as you walk back to her, sprawled out on the shitty bed. Your shitty bed? Alternate timeline Chloe’s shitty bed.

“Where’s Frank?” You ask, looking down at your arm, where the memento mori tattoo is still there, not blacked out, and joined by other colorful tattoos, from your knuckles, up both of your arms, to your chest, and down.

“What the fuck’s up with you?” She spits. “He overdosed and gave this to you. Don’t fucking know why, but I thought that was why you came back here.”

“No, he fucking died in the storm,” you shout. “In the Two Whales. They found his body next to my mom.”

“You aren’t making any sense, Price, what storm? There was no fucking storm. And if you’re just going to rant about shit that doesn’t make sense, and not give it to me, then leave me the fuck alone.”

You run your hand up to your head. At least your hair is still shaved short. You are trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. There was no storm? Arcadia Bay is still there, somehow? And Frank died in an overdose, not in the Two Whales, when the tornado hit. And if that happened…

Fuck, Joyce.

There are keys sitting on the floor next to your bed, on a pile of empty pill bottles. Despite everything that has changed around you, you recognize one, grab it, and run out the door. There it is, your pickup, looking more like it did back before the storm, than when you repaired it, lovingly, in your shop, over the space of years. You run towards it, desperately, trying to find out what is fucking happening, when a familiar voice stops you.

“You, fucking, dyke-ass punk bitch, my dad told you to never come back to this town again.”

You turn, as the world seems to slow. You recognize him, despite everything. Despite the fact that he should be dead, and that he’s older now, strung out on drugs, by the looks of him. You almost want to laugh, though, as he holds a gun on you again. Nathan fucking Prescott has his hand on the trigger, and is still wearing a mask.

“Figures you’d be alive,” you say, still finding it funny, somehow, “what the fuck is this?”

“Shut up, you little bitch! I heard you moved back here, camping out with your RV, and your pickup. Fresh out of fucking prison. You shot me years ago, and I’m here to return the favor.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time you shot me, bitch!” You taunt him, from across the patch of sandy gravel. “Do your worst.”

The shot rings out, and you throw your hand up, automatically, as if that would keep you safe. And, as if in response, you feel the universe shift around you. There is a pricking feeling, blooming into a power in your fingertips, flowing out from you, to the rest of the world. You watch, in disbelief, as you see the bullet slow, and Nathan frozen in time. And then, just like that, the bullet moves backwards into the barrel of the gun, as everything flows in reverse. Time itself is turning back. No, you know, you are turning back time, and you feel the power getting away from you.

You scream, in your head. You’re going too far. Fuck, how the fuck did Max do this? What the hell did she go through? What was it like? You wrench your hand down, and feel the world burn at the edges, and then suddenly return to normal.

“Chloe, what the fuck is going on?” Victoria says, beside you in bed again, as you wake up with a start.

“Shit, shit, shit,” you say, tumbling out of bed, and pulling on the cleanest clothes you can find, “I’ve got her power, what the fuck is happening?”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Price?”

“Everything!” You shout, grabbing your keys again. “The fucking town, no storm, Nathan, Frank’s RV. The power. Time. Fucking you. Everything’s wrong.”

“That’s not what you said last night.”

“Screw you, Victoria,” you spit. “I don’t remember last night. Wait, shit, no, this is what she talked about. When she went into the pictures, and messed around with time. It’s why she remembers the Dark Room, and not us hiding together like I do. But that means...fucking hell, Max, what the fuck did you do?”

“Who?”

“Fuck you, Victoria,” you say, flipping her off, before turning and running towards the door.

You shoulder check the door, and glance left and right, looking for Nathan. He’s nowhere to be found. You’re moving faster this time, sprinting across the open gravel, in your sneakers. You must have beat him, gotten out to your car before he came here. You slide across the hood of your truck, unlock the driver’s side door, and stick the key in the ignition. The pickup coughs, and sputters as you try to start it.

“Fucking piece of shit, Alt Chloe,” you mutter, “why didn’t you ever fix this fucking thing?”

As if in response, the engine suddenly roars, and the truck comes to life under your fingers. And at the same time you hear a voice shout.

“You, fucking, dyke-ass punk bitch, my dad told you to never come back to this town again.”

Fuck, not enough fucking time. Not enough fucking time. How did she fucking do it again? You hold your hand out, and time reverses again, as Nathan disappears from view, and you retreat back into Franks’, well, your, well, Alt Chloe’s RV once again.

“Chloe, what the fuck is going on?”

What was the line, you think, as you leap out of bed, already knowing where the shorts and the keys are. What was it that Max told you Victoria had said, before the storm? Before she survived, moved out East, and got some therapy, apparently? What was the thing she said before she, according to Max, had become a better person in the other timeline. Oh, right.

“Victoria, go fuck your selfie.”

You sprint across to your truck, faster this time. The same flock of seagulls flies over you, as you, once again, slide across the hood. Then you’re inside, starting the truck, and flooring it, kicking sand and gravel out behind your spinning tires, as try to get off the beach before Nathan gets here, this time around.

“You, fucking, dyke-ass punk bitch, my dad told you to never come back to this town again!”

You don’t bother to turn, and look at Nathan as you roar past him, flipping him off out the window. You could go back and get vengeance. You deserve it. Rachel deserves it. But right now you need to fucking find your wife. And your mom, if she’s alive. And he’s already dead, in the right timeline. The main timeline.

“Holy shit,” you mutter, as his wild shots go past you, “why the fuck do I have Max’s powers?”

Shit, calm the fuck down. Do the breathing things. The grounding shit, you tell yourself. Whatever the fuck it is. You remember another timeline. You remember Max telling you about this, when she went through it, before the storm. You saw its effect on her. She remembered that shit, though, when she meddled with time and changed things and now you do too, apparently. You remember another timeline. Your fucking timeline. That little shit must’ve done something, and now you need to find her and undo it. Goddamn it, Max, you think.

And then you slam on the brakes. Arcadia Bay is here. It’s not being rebuilt, or a post-apocalyptic wasteland, or anything like you remember after the storm. But it isn’t Arcadia Bay, not the one you saw get leveled, at least. It’s a bunch of fucking gentrified housing developments. You see fucking chain shops, and restaurants, and fucking, are those fucking tourists? Eating there? Served by masked and gloved waiters? What are they using this for? Airbnb’s? And there, on the side of the road, as you drive down the main street, you see the place where the Two Whales was, where it should be, if the storm hadn’t destroyed it.

It’s a yogurt shop now, in this timeline, apparently.

What the hell happened here? What changed? And how the fuck do you get back to your own timeline? Your Max? This new Arcadia Bay seems hellish. No, worse, it isn’t the town you remember. There’s only one fucking thing that could redeem this shit. And you’re going there now, ignoring traffic laws, to find out if she’s alive in this timeline.

The house is still there. It seems abandoned, almost. The town isn’t destroyed, it’s not dead, but it isn’t itself. It’s not the old Arcadia Bay. And neither is your old house. It’s dingy, and empty looking. You never came back to it, after the storm. You never saw pictures of it. But somehow, this is even worse than the destruction you imagined. You pull into the drive, up on the curb, pull your key out of the ignition, and sprint towards the door.

David answers it, after three solid minutes of heavy knocking. He has a ragged beard, and long hair. He’s only wearing a ragged bathrobe, and a bear bottle is in his hand. He reeks, too, worse than Victoria did. Worse than you smell, probably.

“The fuck,” he mutters, wiping spit from his mouth, “Chloe? You’re back? They fucking let you out?”

“Of prison? Apparently,” you shrug, trying to look past him. “I’m still fucking trying to figure this fucking out, David.”

“David?” He says, and on his filthy face you actually see something that seems touched, like he’s going to start crying. “You never called me that. Ever. I’m really fucking glad to see you.”

“Woah! No hugging, corona,” you say, leaning back from him, as he veers close to you. “You’re drunk, and look like shit. No offense. And judging by your reaction, apparently Alt Chloe never made up with you, while she was in prison. For shooting Nathan. For some reason. Not sure about that yet.”

“What was that, kiddo?”

“Too much to explain. Okay, bidness. Boom, boom. Questions. First, where the fuck is Max?”

“Max? Max who?”

“What the fuck happened that I didn’t fall in love with Max?” You mutter. “Max Price- Caulfield. Shit, no, wait. Max Caulfield she’d be in this timeline. Maybe Maxine? But probably not. Dorky, dweeby. Probably brown hair. Likes photography, hipster shit, and bad sci-fi movies.”

“Wait, didn’t Joyce talk about her sometimes? Before Sean Prescott got you jailed for shooting his son in self defense?”

Okay, you think, that’s one answer, at least I know why Alt Chloe went to jail. Good for her. Nathan deserved it.

“Yeah, did Joyce talk about her?” You prompt.

“Yeah, some sort of friend of yours, growing up? Moved to Seattle I think? What, over a decade ago?”

“Yeah, yeah, yep, that’s her.”

“Don’t know much else, kiddo,” he says, taking a swig of the beer.

“Listen,” you say, feeling your head hurt, “I’m sorry, David, really am. But this is fucking important and I need answers now. Is Joyce still...well is she here? Can I talk to her? I have a lot of questions.”

“Kiddo,” he says, and you see an intense sadness in his eyes as he speaks, “she died, remember? Years ago.”

“Fuck.”

You try to catch your breath and process this information. You’ve already worked through this, right? All these emotions. Then, yeah, that settles it. Joyce is the one thing that would be better about this timeline. The only thing. Fuck this timeline. Fuck it all. It isn’t real. It’s not yours. You will find Max, and undo whatever stupid decision she made, and get your timeline, your life, and your wife, back. Fuck it.

“Kiddo, your nose is bleeding,” David says, his voice uncertain, as you reach up to your face, and come away with blood on your hands.

“Shit,” you mutter softly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs Referenced:  
> -Man, by Neko Case.
> 
> Hey, remember when I said that it was getting weird? Here's the weirdness. Also, what's this? Two chapters in one day? Enjoy :)


	10. Nobody Wins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which David finally gives us some answers.
> 
> CW for discussions of death, murder, and suicide.

Nobody Wins

“So let me get this straight,” David says, as you sit on the swing, next to him, gently swaying back and forth in the cool morning air, “you can reverse time, for whatever reason. You don’t actually know why you can, if it’s like, God, or the devil, or mad science, or something else. And also you’re from another timeline?”

“Well, mentally, but not like, not physically,” you say. “This body is from this timeline. Your timeline. Apparently I got a lot of new tattoos in prison. And also apparently Alt Chloe has a little less muscle, somehow, which is disappointing. But mentally, yeah, I remember a life completely different than yours. Somewhere they diverged, and I’m trying to figure out exactly where, and why, and how to get it back to the way things were. As far as the time powers? My only guess is that I spent long enough around someone else who was using them, but even that’s just a guess. There’s, uh, a lot I don’t know. It’s not exactly like I’m an expert in this shit. It’s all pretty new to me too.”

You both are in the backyard of your old house. His house, you guess? Alt Chloe’s? Probably not. The siding is starting to peel, and the paint is old, and worn. Weeds are everywhere, and the rusty swing groans under you both. You have a tissue in your hand, but your nosebleed, which presumably from using the time powers, just like they did for Max, has stopped. Despite being in another timeline, with another David, and without Max, you feel strangely at ease. You were going to talk to your step-father, weren’t you, after all, before the timelines shifted? And maybe this will be easier if he doesn’t actually remember the conversation later, assuming you do change the timeline back.

“But, the, the umm, you hair is the same? In the other dimension?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, David, your step-daughter is a big dykey butch in all timelines, apparently.”

He looks away from you, up at the cloudless sky, and you realize he’s trying desperately not to cry. Jesus, what the hell did he go through in this timeline? How much weight has he gained? Why does he look so old?

“You never called me that, kid.”

“Listen, David, I…” you begin, trying to find the words, and start again. “I know from your perspective this is a really big, special reconciliation. That, like, you’re connecting with your stepdaughter who’s fresh out of prison during a pandemic, for the first time ever, and, like, I’m guessing based on who I used to be that in this timeline I was a bit of a dick, at the very least. But from my perspective this all already happened, you and me figuring things out, putting our lives back together, all that shit. Hell, when the timelines shifted I was on my way to stay with you.”

“Because you and this Max were fighting, right? You’re, well, married to this girl, then, kiddo?”

“Yeah, ummm.” You say, trying to understand his expression. “Listen, I’m not really sure if this is the first time you hear this in this timeline, I’m still trying to figure out what exactly Max changed, but surprise! Coming out of the closet. I’m hella gay. And also married, for like, over five years now.”

“And now you want to get back to that timeline, because it’s better than this?’

“Yep. Pretty much.”

“No corona?”

“No, still corona. Whatever Max changed I don’t think it was that widespread. Probably just some shit in our own past.”

“Then why is it better?”

“Well, me and Max are together. You don’t know her, David, but you’d really like her, I think. You do in my reality. In my timeline, when she moved back to Arcadia Bay she hid in my closet, and then took the blame for some weed you found. But since then you two have really gotten along. You talk about photography, and shit. Oh, by the way, in my timeline I stopped smoking. It was messing with my meds.”

“Meds?”

“Psych meds,” you say with a shrug. “Along with, you know, therapy. She’s really fucking good for me, David, as much as she’s fucked up. You were at our wedding. You cried, actually.”

“Jesus,” he says, wiping some grease out of his beard, “that does sound good. What about Joyce?”

You open your mouth, close it again, and look away from him.

“She’s dead there too. Sorry.”

“Oh. How, uhh, how did she die, in your timeline?”

“There was...a storm. A really big one, that happened in my timeline, and apparently not here. Tornado, weirdly enough. It killed a lot of people. Joyce among them, and levelled the town. They’re rebuilding it now, but I never came back. You didn’t either. We never really talked about it, but I think it was too much for either of us to see it all again, without her.”

“How did I survive? Why wasn’t I with her, Chloe?”

You look away, trying to find the words to explain all this trauma to someone who is clearly dealing with his own. Someone you relate to, and also somehow still don’t know. It’s like seeing a stranger wearing your best friend's face. Some part of you feels a little more sympathy, now, for Max, than you used to. The alternate timeline she told you about, the one where you died, would have been harder on her than you thought, than you gave her credit for. You understand that now.

“Did you find the Dark Room in this timeline?”

“The what?”

“Okay, gotta go further back apparently. Did me and Rachel...did that all still happen, here?”

“Yeah, it did,” he says softly.

“Alright, Mark Jefferson, that douchebag professor at Blackwell, he’s got a creepy-ass bunker where he takes pictures of girls. Rachel, shit, Kate Marsh. You found him, in my timeline. Apparently not here, though.”

“Shit,” he mutters under his breath. “I hadn’t thought about Kate Marsh in years, since she killed herself. Then, this teacher, he must have been the one who kidnapped Victoria too, Rachel, and all those other girls, over the years?”

“Shit, yeah, that’d be him.”

“And I never caught him,” he says, looking away into the distance. “Do you know where this bunker is, Chloe? Because I am going to kill him.”

“Yeah,” sure, you wave your hand, trying to focus on the fact that this isn’t reality, and you will change all of this timeline, “but I’ll tell you when we’re done, because remember that never happened in my timeline. The right timeline. And if I change it back then you don’t have to worry about it. Hell, Kate Marsh is alive in my timeline, and friends with Max. Apparently she’s dating some other Christian girl in Portland, and her and my wife talk like once a week at least.”

“But it is real,” he says, looking at you sadly. “It’s real for me. I remember it all. And I need to kill him.”

“Sure, fine,” you say, through gritted teeth. “But, fuck it, before I can tell you, David, you need to tell me how she died. In this timeline. Joyce? Tell me what happened after I shot Nathan. Please. I’m trying to play catch up with all this timeline bullshit, and I’m sick of it. I need answers.”

“Well, kiddo,” he says, clearing his throat, “you got a text, a little before, I think, that warned you about that Nathan and his gun. You didn’t tell me, but, well, I guess I can’t really be mad at you if you don’t remember that. You shot him, he lived. I said it was self defense and I still believe that, but Sean Prescott had the best fucking lawyers in town, and you got sent to prison. Until now, apparently. I don’t suppose you have any idea why you decided to come back?”

“Alt Chloe came back,” you snort, “she apparently also thought it would be a good idea to hook up with Victoria fucking Chase, so don’t ask me to understand her, ‘cause I don’t. I also think she was on a lot of drugs. I don’t know if that helps, but maybe it at least explains why she didn’t contact you. Uhhh, sorry about that, by the way, I guess, David, for whatever it’s worth. After I got sent to jail, in this timeline, what happened?”

“Town went to hell,” he says, blowing his nose on his robe. “That poor girl jumped from the roof, and I lost my job. Got kind of obsessed with catching whoever was responsible. Joyce had enough of it, I think. Enough of me. Went for a drive, one night, out by the lighthouse, to get away from the house, and she, uh, went off a cliff. That was four years ago.”

“Shit, man, David, I am sorry.”

“Yeah, me too. Sean Prescott bought up the town, some more girls disappeared. He gentrified the shit out of it, and tore down the Two Whales. I don’t even recognize the place, anymore. So, Chloe, if, well, if really are Chloe, tell me, is your timeline better this? Because I’m an alcoholic piece of shit, and I’d like to change that. I’d like to be a better person. But you say that a lot of people died in that storm. Was it worth it, then?”

“David, I,” you begin, as he accidentally probes at the deepest insecurities you have, the ones you still haven’t worked out with your therapist, in your timeline, the ones that leave you wondering if Max should have sacrificed you, “I’m not a philosopher. I can’t say whether my life is more important than anyone else’s. But I do know that my life is good, now, in my timeline. Me and Max have shit going on between us, like any other married couple, I guess, even if they don’t have time travel messed up in it. But it is still good. She’s good. She’s wonderful. You have a good life. You and I are close. They’re rebuilding the town, and no Mark Jefferson or Nathan Prescott is killing anyone in Arcadia Bay.”

“And is that enough for you? Do you want to go back to that?”

“Yes, David, I do.”

“God, Chloe,” he says, stepping off his swing, and hugging you, before you can stop him, “that’s enough for me. I am not doing alright, in this timeline. And maybe that makes me selfish. Maybe we both are. But if you can save me, then I am okay with you changing the world back to the way it was in your timeline. What do you need?”

“Alright,” you say, gently pushing him off you, “I need some snacks for the road, and gas for the truck. Alt Chloe was probably siphoning off other people's gas, I’m guessing, and the pickup is running on empty. Then I need all the pictures of me, mom, Rachel, Max, anyone else you can find. Pretty much all the pictures. And yes, it is for the freaky time powers I got from Max, like I told you, and no, I still don’t know where they came from. Then, finally, I need a boombox.”

“And then?” He asks, finally crying.

“Then I fucking drive to Seattle, track Max down, and get my wife back from whatever stupid mistake she made. And if it helps, I’ll tell you where the Dark Room is, and you can go kill Mark Jefferson, before I change the timeline back.”

“You got it, kiddo,” he says, hugging you again.

He runs into your house, well, his house. But before he goes you see a figure, in the upstairs window, where him and Joyce lived, in another life. For a moment you glance up there, and you could swear that it looks like Max. But then it’s gone, into static, and you shake your head, get up, and go to save your wife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs Referenced:  
> -Nobody Wins, by Brian Fallon.


	11. Hail Mary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for discussion of death and suicide.

Hail Mary

You floor it, out of Arcadia Bay, heading north towards Washington. Alt Chloe’s pickup is a piece of shit. It can barely get up to seventy, let alone eighty, like you want to, and screw the cops. Worse still, she didn’t bother to put in an aux cord, leaving you with only a shitty radio to listen to. It fades in and out, as you listen to a conspiracy theory spewing AM channels, talking about dual moons, and the pandemic. Signs tell you to stay home, and you ignore them, just as in your timeline.

Eventually, however, you find a decent punk channel, blaring out tinny and faint, as you find the interstate. You sit back, trying to avoid your own thoughts, as the formerly clear sky overhead darkens, and start to fill with clouds, moving in fast out of the west. At least Arcadia Bay is behind you.

“Now she’s heard it a lot, when she couldn’t respond,” the radio blares, “tied her guts in a knot, close call you know.”

You want to curse her, but more than anything else, you’re worried about her. Worried about Max. Despite everything she’s still your wife. She broke your trust, but at the same time, is she okay here, in this timeline? You nearly got shot. And worse, still, is the idea that she might not remember you. Is that how the power would work? If you have it now, would she even have it? If she altered time so she never developed it, what the fuck would that mean?

Your head hurts, and time travel is bullshit.

The sky is grey overhead, like television static spread across everything. Around you are thick pines, full of mist. A thunderstorm is rolling in, over the mountains. Thunder rumbles. Any second now lightning is going to start arching down. And for a moment, you find yourself thinking that more than anything else, this feels like the end of the world. Then a huge bolt flashes down, splitting a tree in front of you, and you curse.

“Fuck.”

“Such a pretty cat, with so much brighter than,” the radio says, and then fades into an overwhelming scream of static.

“...some moments last forever,” another voice says, “but some flare out with love, love, love.”

You turn, scream, and the wheel turns with you, off the road, towards the guard rail. In that moment, you freeze, and the world goes grey. You reverse time, backwards, onto the road, and then keep on driving. You look over at the passenger seat, where the figure was sitting, and shake your head. You’re losing it, Chloe.

“She’s being eaten for that, close call, you know.”

This time you scream again, at the familiar figure in your seat, speaking to you in a voice you know more than anything else in the world. Your vision blurs, and goes static at the edges, but you manage to keep the pickup on the highway, just barely, as bullets of sweat run down your forehead.

“What the fuck are you?” You say through gritted teeth.

“Holy shit, are you cereal? I’m her, dumbass.”

She’s sitting there, in your passenger seat, and you know her. Or you don’t. Shit, you don’t know how to say these things. She’s in a grey hoodie, pulled over a head shaved closer to the skin than yours. And she’s bulkier, and muscled, like she’s been training for years. But at the same time she’s older, and wearier. She looks like she’s aged a decade since you last saw her, and her eyes are empty, and hollow, even as she gives you a grin that is far, far, too wide.

But it is still Max’s face that this person, this thing, is looking at you with, like she is wearing it.

“Shit, shit, no you aren’t,” you say, seeing a cop car behind you, and looking for a place to pull over. “You aren’t my Max.”

“Your Max is relative term,” she says, lowering the passenger seat of your truck back, and sprawling out, “I am one of her. One of the many Maxes she has left behind. Another one, sent down another parallel timeline, branching out into impossible infinities. I could explain it all to you, but it’s all very technical, and I don’t think a stoner dropout like you would understand much of it.”

“Where is she?”

“Your Max? Your Max in this timeline? Fuck if I know. But god, Chloe, you have no idea how good it is to see your face, to finally be able to tell you in person what a fucking bitch you are. I take it you remember the other timeline?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” You say, as the cop slips into the lane right behind you.

“I’ll take that as a yes. You have my powers. Which, I guess could make sense. Not sure what your Max did either, but you were in that bathroom, right? Alt Chloe, was that you called her? She was in that bathroom with Nathan. I wonder if that’s what did it, and why you remember this shit, and have powers. Or maybe you just spent enough time around us, and it rubbed off on you. Isn’t time wonderful? Of course, your Max never really appreciated it, since she’s so wrapped up in you and your fucked up relationship.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Don’t insult our mom like that, I am still Max, after all. Older, wiser, and a lot more confident in time and space, but still her. Me and her, your Max, branched off, at one place and time, and I’ve spent decades getting back here to undo what got screwed up then. God, the things I know about you and her, Chloe.”

“I don’t need to know that.” You say, keeping your eyes frozen on the road, as another lightning bolt arcs across the sky. “She’s my wife. She can have her privacy.”

“Oh, but she’s me, Chloe. We are full of thoughts, like, do you how convinced she is that you will destroy her, somehow, someday? And that a part of her thinks she’s only with you out of some twisted version of Stockholm Syndrome. Do you even know what that is, you dumb punk?”

“You’re not her.”

“I’m not? Do you want me to tell you secrets then, Chloe, prove I am? Do you know why she never wrote those letters, never called when she was in Seattle? I can tell you.”

“I know why,” you mutter, still eyeing the cop car.

“You don’t even know the half of it,” she says, and then looks at her feet, where all your stuff is thrown. “Pictures, hmm? A lot of them. God, I didn’t think you’d have the intelligence to make that connection, and you’re already getting to be almost as manipulative as her. Dive into the photos, right? Jump, whatever, and make a change? Good plan, unfortunately you don’t have the one you actually need.”

“How the fuck would you know what I need?” You hiss.

“Because I am her. The same girl who had a crush on you, all the way back then. Who was too chickenshit to call you. The same one who bent time and space around her fingers because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to make friends. I have gone up and down time, Chloe. And I finally know what you need to do, if you ever, ever cared for us.”

“What do you want?”

“Do you see this photo?” She says, holding out one towards you. “It’s the one you need, not all this shit.”

You glance at. One glance is all you need. Blue. Butterfly. You recognize it. You’ve had nightmares about it, in another timeline.

“How did you get that?”

“Again! So complicated. Up, and down time. Back and forth, back and forth. Hell, even I don’t get it all sometimes. Like, do you know where I got this power? Why you have it now? I don’t know. I Tego Arcana Dei, and some things are made to stay secret. But that picture there is the key to it all. I snatched it away from the storm, and now you have a chance to make it all good, Chloe. That’s what I want.”

“Why?” You say, barely a whisper.

“Because,” she says, jerking her seat back up, “of when me and her split. You know what decision I made, right, that she was too much of a coward to do? You’ve figured it out, right, or do I need to spell it out for you, in a big convenient, binary choice?”

“You killed me.”

“No, you fucking idiot,” she says, with more of a sigh than anything else, “I saved everyone in Arcadia Bay. I sacrificed you. For the greater good. She’s the death, there, I’m the one that saved everyone. I was good. I got out, got a job, and tried to forget you. And the power kept growing, like it was supposed to be there. Like I was given it for a reason. And you kept fucking torturing me, Chloe. Over and over, running through my head, and I made the connection.”

“What connection?”

“You!” She says, suddenly shouting. “This is all your fault. In my head, I keep seeing you. You dying, again, and again, and again, in all the timelines, and the way we fucking kissed, and the life I never fucking got to live. I kept all my secrets. How could I tell anyone about the Dark Room, or you, or anything else? The week we spent together would always be a secret. It was torture. I nearly killed myself it was so bad. But I saved the town, right, I did the right thing, and so the conclusion is inescapable. I never should have met you, that is the connection. And I have been pushing my way into this timeline, this reality, for ages, to fix that. You have the power. Save her. Save Max. Save us.”

“You’re not her.”

“Yes I am,” she whispers. “I am the her that saved Arcadia Bay. I’m the good her. And I’ve been in hell, Chloe. And now you can finally prove that you actually love her. Love us. You can prove that you aren’t just a selfish broken asshole. You can prove that you’re more than just a piece of trash dyke from a shit hole town, and do the one thing you’ve always been good at. Dying.”

“You know how I know you aren’t her? Because she loves me, and as fucked up as she is, as much as she needs to take care of herself, not lie and fucking eat more, she would do anything to protect me. So screw you.”

The cop car passes, speeding down the interstate, and as if on signal, you slam the breaks, pull over in one fluid motion, and prepare to attack the figure sitting in your seat. But, with a laugh, she vanishes, into static, like she’s fading out of this world. And maybe, if she is some inter-dimensional version of Max, and not just the power frying your mind, then she is. Or maybe you’ve lost it.  
Your panting for breath, and your heart feels like it is going to break, from pounding so heavily. But your eye is still caught by the one thing left sitting on your passenger seat. The picture Max took in the bathroom, all those years ago. If you wanted, with her power, you could go there, make sure you die, make sure Max never had this power, never met you, and saved Arcadia Bay. You could finally, just, die.

You move to tear it up, and then lower your hands again. You’re crying now, and you feel like an idiot, despite yourself. You punch the wheel, and it doesn’t do anything except make your hand hurt. And then you fold up the picture, and put it in your pocket, and move on to Seattle, to the only place you know to look for Max, your Max, as the version of her that saved the Bay, Bay Max, you guess, goes off to float in whatever other timeline she came from.

The radio comes back, in a blare of static.

"Hail Mary, trust me, don’t look back or it’s gonna end badly."

A few hours later, Seattle rises up around you, as the thunderstorm blocks out the sun. People aren’t out on the street. Driven off by the pandemic, and the torrential rain, which almost blocks out your windshield. But you would know the place without sight. You spent enough time there, right after the storm, before your own apartment. It was where she told you she was bi, and where you told her you were a lesbian, and where so many other small things in your relationship started. You park illegally, pull on your mask, and run through the rain to the building’s buzzer, covered by a generous awning.

“Who is it?” A familiar, older male voice asks, after a minute.

“Mr. Caulfield? I don’t know if you know me, or if you remember me, but it’s Chloe Price, from Arcadia Bay. I’m looking for Max. It’s an emergency.”

There is a long pause, before he answers.

“Chloe? Are you here to help Max?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Referenced:  
> -Hail Mary, by Skating Polly.  
> -Love, Love, Love, by the Mountain Goats.


	12. Behold the Hurricane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for discussion of self harm, drug use, and disordered eating.

Behold the Hurricane

Time travel is bullshit.

That’s the only way you can explain it, right? That has to be why her parents directed you to this place, that you know better than the back of Max’s hand. It’s the same building that you and Max lived in, in your timeline, when you just had the studio apartment, after you moved out of her parent’s place. You can’t think of any other way to put it, any other reason why Max, the Max from this timeline, Alt Max, would move into the exact same place. Some fucking coincidences are just too much.

You knock on the door, once, twice, and then three times, and finally someone answers, yelling weakly from the other side. It takes a minute to even recognize it as Max’s voice, it’s so faint, and reedy.

“Okay, okay, I can see you through the peephole. What the fuck do you want?”

“Max, please, please tell me you know me.”

There’s a pause, and you feel a pressure building in your chest.

“No, should I?”

Thunder rumbles low, outside, and you feel like the world is slipping away from you. Shit, did your therapist tell you what to do if you find yourself in another timeline, and your wife doesn’t recognize you? Grounding, or something? Meditation? Breathing exercise?

“It’s Chloe. Chloe...Price. I, uhh, I need to talk to you about something. Do you...do you remember me?”

Another pause, and the pressure in your chest makes you feel like your heart is going to explode.

“Chloe?”

“You do remember me?” You ask, desperately, feeling a sudden release of the pressure next to your heart.

“Of course, you were my best friend. Sorry, you’ve just changed a lot since we were kids,” her voice says, and you can tell she’s smiling, even as you are crushed by her words. “But then again, so have I. You’ve got your mask on, right? Would you mind stepping six feet back before I open up the door? Don’t want anything spreading, and I’m pretty immunocompromised, as it is.”

You take two giant steps back, and watch the door. You hear it being unlocked, lock after lock, after lock, after lock, until finally it swings open, and she steps out of the shadows. You feel your tears welling up, as you gasp out her name.

“Max, I’m…”

“Yeah, I'm not doing the best, I know.”

It’s worse than Bay Max. Once again you know her. She’s clearly Max, your wife, the woman you love, the person you know better than anyone else in the world. And at the same time she’s not. She’s lost weight, a catastrophic amount of weight. Over her mask her eyes are sunk deep into her head. Her skin is pale, paler than is normal, even for her. You can see the veins through it, it’s so paper thin. She’s walking with a cane, and her hair is long, and matted, falling down her back in dense tangled waves. She looks like hell, but even still, from her eyes alone, you can tell she’s smiling, when she sees you.

“Do you, do you have it?” You ask, uncertainly.

“Had it, yeah,” she says, with a little nod, “eventually a test came back negative, and apparently I’ve recovered. Wish I could say that the virus was where, well, all this started, but I was pretty underweight even before that. Not eating enough, you know? I heard you went to prison, Chloe. Finally got out? What brings you up here?”

“I, uh,” you say, and then hesitate, shit, Max would be really good at hiding this, but you’re still you, and you don’t know how to deal with this, “umm, can I ask a really weird question, when did you and I last see each other?”

“When we were kids, Chloe, don’t you remember?”

“Okay, right,” you say, trying not to look at the heavy scaring, or the new cuts on her arms, “and then, well, what happened to you?”

“Did my parents send you to check on me?”

“No! I mean, I saw them, and they’re worried, yeah. They said something about you calling them late last night, talking about things they didn’t understand?”

“Yeah, I don’t remember that,” she says, frowning.

“Please,” you ask her, desperately. “Tell me what you said. Tell me what happened to you.”

“That’s, uhh, kinda rude, Chloe,” she says, frowning with her eyes.

“Okay, okay,” you say, waving your hands in front of you, “I don’t know to deal with all this shit, David believed me really fucking easy, so I’m just gonna copy you, alright? From way back in the day. What do you have in your pockets, right now?”

“What?

“Pockets, just tell me what you have?”

She reaches into the pockets of her grimy sweatpants, under her tank top, and for a moment you see her collarbones stick out like she’s just a skeleton with skin over it. Then she pulls out a wadded up tissue, a stick of nicotine gum, a crumpled back of cigarettes, and a razor blade. You look at them, for a second, and feel like crying, and then you raise your hand, and rewind time backwards.

“That’s, uhh, kinda rude, Chloe.”

“Listen closely,” you say, “because this is going to sound insane. I’m from another timeline, and I can control time. Wait, shit, fuck, Max don’t even say anything, I said this was going to sound insane, but I have proof. I just asked you to show me what's in your pockets and then rewound time, so you don’t remember it. In your pockets you have a wadded up tissue, a half crumpled pack with five cigarettes left in it, a single stick of nicotine gum, and a razor blade.”

She looks at you, frowns, and pats her pockets, before answering.

“How did you do that?”

‘Here, I’ll prove it again,” you say, “can I look in your apartment, for just a minute?”

“I...guess?” She says, hobbling backwards, and letting you look inside.

“Oh, god, Max.”

It’s dark inside, and trash is piled everywhere. Jesus fucking Christ, you think, Max, what happened to you? In the kitchen sink you see a pile of plastic red plates, on the table is frozen burrito, with the corner nibbled out of it, and on the bed are a bunch of empty pill bottles, next to another razor blade. You want to cry, but instead, you raise your hand, and let time rewind once again.

“How did you do that?” She asks again.

“Okay, more proof,” holding up one finger, “you just let me see in your apartment, and then I rewound time. You have seven red plastic plates in your sink. One’s broken. You have a barely touched burrito on your table, and four empty pill bottles on your bed, next to a razor blade, and the cigarette holes burnt into it.”

“Holy shit,” she says, glancing over her shoulder, “how did you do that?”

“Time rewinding. I needed you to believe me when I say the next thing, because it is going to sound crazy to you. I am from a different timeline. One where everything is different. In my timeline you came back to Arcadia Bay, and I didn’t go to jail, and a bunch of other stuff is different. I’m trying to figure out exactly where and why the two timelines diverged, and to do that I really need your help. When did you and I last see each other?”

“Shit,” she says, running a hand through her thin hair, “uh, when I left Arcadia Bay, years ago.”

“Okay, then why didn’t you come back?”

“I, uhh,” she said, scratching at her cheek with a yellowed fingernail, “well it’s kinda a weird thing. I was going to. And then I went out to eat with my parents, and, well, I don’t remember it, but apparently I told them I didn’t want to go. And I sent you a text too. Something weird about a gun and a bathroom. You don’t remember it?”

“God fucking dammit, Max,” you say, as it all comes together, “not you, Alt Max, other Max. My Max. I know what she fucking did. Probably sitting there all guilty, and overprotective, and went back in time to keep herself from Arcadia Bay at all, thinking I’d be better off without her, and at the same time tried to warn me and keep me alive too. That’s who sent the text about Nathan to Alt Chloe. Then I’m in the bathroom, and you’re not, so I guess I have the time powers, then? Fucking hell, Max, if I ever get back to you I am really going to give you a piece of my mind.”

You look back at her, the other Max, and you expect her to be confused, or lost, but instead she’s got her head turned. You know that look. It’s when she’s thinking really, really hard, or remembering something.

“What were you and me to each other, Chloe, in the other timeline.”

“Uhhh, I kinda don’t want to say.”

“We were married, right?”

“Yes, shit! Are you...remembering stuff, Max?”

“The reason my parents were freaked out was last night was, I, well, I called them,” she says, looking away from you, “I was apparently ranting about you. And I don’t really remember it, but all day I’ve been getting these images in my head, like intrusive thoughts. And, like, Chloe, I am not well. Mentally or otherwise. I know that Being underweight makes your bones weak, which is why I broke my hip, and it can also change how you think. And I, uhhh, am on some stuff I probably shouldn’t be on, and I don’t really have any friends. I never really learned how to. I never went to college, and I ended up on disability. I know what delusions and hallucinations are like. And I don’t think that these thoughts of you, this other life, these images in my head, were those?”

“What were those images, Max?” You say, desperately hoping against hope.

“You and me on some beach somewhere, and in the desert, and in an apartment,” she says, almost dreamily. “I think in one I was in a black dress, and you were in a white suit, or something like that.”

“Yes, fuck,” you say, with tears in your eyes, “I think you might be remembering. I mean, it makes sense, as much as anything makes sense. You’ve been all around time travel. I was starting to remember, I think, before the timelines shifted. Maybe the same thing applies to you. Do you, do you remember me, Max? I’m your wife.”

She looks at you, leaning heavily on her cane. Between the dry and splitting hair falling across her face, and the mask covering her nose and mouth, you can’t see much of her face. She’s gaunt, but even so, you can read her like a book. You know her, in another timeline. Something is crossing her face. Something soft, and hopeful, and you feel the lump in your chest, the tightness, soften. Does she remember you?

And then suddenly the soft expression leaves her face, and something hard, and dangerous expression settles there instead. At the same time, you feel the tightness in your chest come back, along with a horrible sinking feeling. The bottom falls out everything, and you know things are about to go very wrong.

“Chloe,” she says, her voice rough, “I’m a piece of shit with a list of mental illnesses longer than your arm. Even if we were married, in another timeline, even if I could trust my own memories, you wouldn’t want to be married to me. Just leave me.”

She closes the door, before you can react. But even so, you are still you. And you shout at her, through the door.

“I love you, you know. You’ve still got shit going on in our timeline, still got trauma, and mental illness, and I still love you,” you shout, and then control your voice, down to a whisper. “Please, Max, I love you. Come out, if you remember me. Please. I want to be your wife. I am your wife.”

She doesn’t answer, and eventually, despite everything, you have to retreat to your car, to eat, and look at the old pictures of Rachel, and Joyce, and you, as you cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs Referenced:  
> -Behold the Hurricane, by The Horrible Crowes.
> 
> Oof, arguably one of the saddest chapters. Also, for what it's worth, I have, like, the next three chapter already typed out, and ready to reviewed and edited, so...sorry for the really fast updates? Updated the number of chapters to reflect how many I now think this story will take to finish. And as always, thank you for reading.


	13. The Obituaries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for discussion of death and suicide.

The Obituaries

You eat the snacks David gave you, and cry alone in your pickup. Two years ago, in your timeline, you and Max went out in your pickup, to a national park, and camped out. The night you did, you ended up having sex in here, on the passenger seat, as rain drizzled down onto the roof. It was one of the most romantic things you had ever done. And you miss it. You miss her. With her not here, though, the only thing you can do, as you listen to The Menzingers on the radio, and look at the pictures David, or, well, Alt David, gave you, is cry, and keep right on crying.

There are the ones with William, of course. The one Max took, in your kitchen, right before he left your life forever, and more. There are plenty of you with Joyce, at your home, at the Two Whales, throughout Arcadia Bay. There’s you before the storm that never happened in this timeline, you without you blue hair, and you with. And then of course, you and Rachel. The picture you hid under your bed. The black and white ones from the mall photo machine.

It’s disgusting, and it makes you want to puke. What the fuck is this shit? How is therapy supposed to help with this? How could any meds help? How do you get back to your Max, and how do you make this all right, all good? As you think of it, you find your eyes dragged to your passenger seat, where, somehow, you see her, Bay Max, sitting there, grinning at you, the picture of the butterfly in her hands. Despite her sudden appearance, you find you aren't surprised. Some part of your brain still expected to see her again.

“You know you can do it, right?” She says, taunting you. “It’ll be so easy! Go through the picture, let Nathan fucking shoot you, and I don’t have the memories of you in my head. Everything is perfect. Just fucking die. Do it. Do it, Chloe. I know you can. You die very, very well.”

You feel the power spiraling out around you, as you look at the picture in your hand, and then, almost like it’s meant to be, you feel yourself jumping into it, falling into it, going back in time. And just like that, there she is.

She’s sitting next to you in the cheap mall photo kiosk, as the shutter snaps, one last time, and spits out three black and white pictures of you both. You and her, when you had hair, and she was alive. Rachel.

“Come on, Chloe, let’s go,” she says, standing up and walking away from you, and you freze.

It would be so easy to change things, accidentally. You’ve talked about it, with your therapist, over and over and over again. What you would change, how you’d do things differently. But then, you remember Max, and what it was like meeting her, in the other timeline. Like a stranger wearing her face. All those changes, spiraling out unpredictably. Chaos theory. Gentrified Arcadia Bay, dead Kate, dead Joyce, Jefferson on the loose, who knows what other changes you hadn’t even noticed. And all of them happened because Max wanted to make things better. And you realize, you can’t do that. You cannot change things, or rewrite your history. Not one line. You will not.

So, as she walks away from you, you mumble what you wish you could have said to her, back then.

“I’m sorry, Rachel. You deserved better than you got, someone’s got to say it sometimes ‘cause it’s true. I thought you were so cool. I was in love with you, and maybe you weren’t. Maybe you were just manipulating me, or using me, or just going through your own shit. I don’t know. I really wish you hadn’t slept with Frank, but I can’t take that back now. But I also want you to know that I love my life now, and I have to move on from you. I’m sorry.

“You alright, Chloe?” She asks, turning around, and smiling at you.

“Yeah,” you say, as reality itself seems to burn around you, “just saying some goodbyes, I suppose.”

And then, just like that, you’re back, sitting in the car, with Bay Max still smirking at you.

“Looking through the obituaries, Price?” She says, with a fake yawn, as the wind picks up outside. “You know you’re just delaying the inevitable. You are going to go die. It’s what you need to do, you know. You’re not worth it. Never were.”

“Even if I wasn’t worth it, asshole,” you say, flipping her off, “then I’d still have a few people I’d want to say goodbye to first, while I had the power. Fuck you.”

And then you are jumping into another picture, down again, letting reality blur, and go static, as the power spirals out around you.

“You alright, Chloe?”

She’s just taken a picture of you. You look around, trying to remember this picture. The Two Whales. When was this taken? You have hair, and, yeah, you think, pulling a bit of in front of your face. It’s blue. So, probably after Rachel, but before Max. And there she is, sitting across from you, in her uniform, a camera in hand. Joyce.

“Listen, mom,” you say, starting to feel yourself crying, “I know I’m an asshole sometimes, that I’m not always the best daughter. I’m a pain for you and David, and I know it, and I’m sorry.”

“Chloe, baby, are you okay?” She asks, putting down her camera, and reaching out towards you.

“Yeah, yeah,” you say, wiping your nose, “sorry, I need to get this out ‘cause in a few minutes I’m probably gonna be pissed at you, again or something. I don’t really know what it’ll look like from your perspective.”

“I’m here for you, Chloe.”

At the edges of your vision you see the world turning static, burning, and know that the pocket of time is collapsing around you, and you’re fading. And just then, walking through the diner’s doors, you see Max. Max as she looked before the storm, with her bangs, and her hoodies, and t-shirts. But even so, you know it is not your Max. She grins at you, with a predatory, unhinged, look, and too much teeth, and you know it’s the other Max, Bay Max, wearing that outfit like a skin.

“What are you doing here?” You hiss, as she walks by you.

“Waiting for Max,” she says, flashing you a smile. “She should be here soon. Or maybe you will. Or maybe she’s dreaming. Or maybe you both are, but don’t worry. Joyce can’t see me. Say goodbye to your mom now.”

Joyce is still staring at you, even as the rest of the Two Whales seems to be frozen in time. A harsh light is coming in through the windows, and you can’t see what’s out there. But you can feel it. A little vibration in the floor. Wind picking up, like a storm is coming, or the world is ending.

“Chloe?” She asks again.

“Right,” you say, feeling your head start to ache, and trying to ignore the other Max sitting down in the booth behind you. “I don’t think I have long, so I need to tell you this. I’m sorry. You deserve better, and I’m sorry that she, and I, couldn’t save you. I love you Mom. Until the end of time.”

And then the edges of your vision blur, and go static, and you’re back in your pickup, again, with Bay Max sitting in the passenger seat, eating your snacks.

“Got a nasty nosebleed going there, bitch,” she says. “Don’t overdo it on the time travel stuff. That shit will fry your brain real good. I mean, look at me, you think I’m the most sane person out there?”

“What the fuck,” you mumble, trying to find the last photo through the headache. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in the Two Whales.”

“I was?” She asks, spitting out crumbs all over the place, as the rain picks up intensity, and night settles on Seattle. “Huh, that’s not a bad idea. Gives me another way to maybe get past me to make the right choice, and drive you to end this whole fucking thing and let yourself die, Chloe. I guess I will be in that diner. Time-wimey bullshit if you ask me, but I’ll see you there, I, guess, in my future, and your past.”

You find the last photo, the one you wanted. You hold it in your hands, as you try to focus through the tears. Outside the wind starts rocking your truck back and forth. Lightning flickers across the sky, and strikes a nearby building. The rain starts leaking through your door. It’s heavy, now, pouring down, and only getting worse, and part of you, with a sinking dread, feels that this is the same storm that destroyed Arcadia Bay, coming upon you again. But you don’t care. You have to do this, while you still have the power. You can’t let this opportunity slip by. So, as Bay Max devours your food, you dive in, one last time, to a picture.

You are in your kitchen, your old kitchen, next to him, and she has just taken your picture. She’s flicking it around, like Max does, in all times, and places, and realities, and putting it on your counter, and for one second you give yourself a headache thinking about the levels of time manipulation potentially going on here. The levels of bullshit.

She told you about this, years after, over tears. A little bit of what she went through, before she started to shut down, and hide secrets from you, trying to keep you safe. Max went back in time, to this place, and tried to save William. Is that her from the future, in thirteen year old her? It makes you head hurt just trying to comprehend it, but you’ve got to act fast. Time is wasting, and just at that moment, the phone rings, and you feel your heart jump into your younger self’s throat.

Max is walking around, looking at things, and you, or past you, or whatever it is, is stirring eggs. You force yourself to keep stirring them, over, and over, and over again, trying to keep from panicking. And then he’s off the phone and you know that this is the only time you have to act, to say what you always wanted to tell him. You will not change the future. You will not rewrite it, not one, single solitary line. You love your life, and your wife, throughout all of time and space, but you still want to say goodbye.

“Excuse me, ladies,” he, William, your father, says, all joking and light, “I have to go rescue yonder queen at the Sav-Mart. She doth have many bags of delicious grub for us to feast upon.”

“Wait, dad,” you say, running out of the kitchen, and towards the hallway, as Max, future, past, Alt, Bay, or some variant you don’t even know of, yet, wanders around your living room, “I need to tell you something.”

“Chloe, you okay?” He asks. “You have a nosebleed.”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” you say, “your, uhh, your keys are right here.”

“Okay, are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yes,” you say, looking up at him, and trying to stop the tears, “I just wanted to say bye, and thanks for being the best dad a girl could ever want. I love you so much, forever, and I think I am going to have a fantastic life, and part of that is because you were in it.”

“Oh, uhhh,” he says, perhaps a little awkwardly, rubbing the back of his head. “Thanks. I love you too. Forever. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” you say, wiping the blood from your nose, as your vision tears and goes static at the seams. “I’ll be good. I’ve got Max here to keep me safe.”

“That’s good,” he says, giving you a smile. “Keep each other safe, you two, don’t let anyone split up your team.”

“Don’t worry,” you say, back to him, as he walks into the wide void bearing down on you, “no one will. Until the end of time.”

“Love you, Chloe.”

The world tears, and rips apart around you, as you reach for Max’s hand. You don’t find it. Instead, the white overwhelms you, and you head throbs, and pulses, like it is going to explode. And then blackness swallows you, and you are falling.

“What’s up, Price!” A voice calls in the darkness, her voice, Bay Max’s voice. “Ready to die? Go back in time, let Nathan kill you and put this all behind you. You know it’s what you deserve.”

“Fuck you,” you say, barely above a whisper, “I deserve better, and I am not rewriting one line of my life with Max, not one moment.”

“Still don’t see it yet? Still not ready to fucking give up? Then before I let this nightmare take care of you, why don’t you just keep on falling, and listen to a little story about the life and times of Maxine Caulfield.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs References:  
> -The Obituaries, by The Menzingers.  
> -You Were Cool, by the Mountain Goats.
> 
> Honestly, one of my favorite chapters, and one of the most fun to write. Enjoy!


	14. The Fury in Your Head

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for drug use, murder, and suicide.

The Fury in Your Head

She kisses you, soft, sweet, gentle. So unlike her, and it is the happiest and saddest thing you have ever done in your life. And just like that, it is over, and you know what you need to do. What you have to do. The only choice. The right choice.

“I’ll always love you. Now go, get out of here, please! Do it before I freak, and Max Caulfield? Don’t you forget about me,” Chloe says, stepping away from you, as the storm gets closer.

“Never,” you whisper, like a prayer asking her for forgiveness.

And then you do it. You are back in that hellish bathroom. That fucking bathroom where it all started. And you are listening to Nathan, and then her. She’s yelling. Chloe is yelling, and scared, and alone, and you could stop it. She is the first person you ever kissed. The first person you ever loved. The first girl you ever loved. You could save her, and stop it, still. She is your best friend, and you are the one person who could keep her alive.

You would just need to kill everyone in Arcadia Bay to do it.

And then the shot rings out, like it is piercing your own heart. And you know that she is dead, and you will never be the same, as you start to cry. She came into your heart, and made her home there, and tore it out again as she, and you don’t know what happens after that. You suppose you’re about to find out. And the world folds in on itself, the way you want to. And you wake up again, looking out at the sea, at the sunset, and the storm is nowhere to be seen. Arcadia Bay is saved.

The funeral is bullshit. You are still in shock. She was just there, after all, and you can’t tell anyone. As far as anyone knows you last saw her five years before. You get that Nathan and Jefferson were arrested, but how can anyone even come close to understanding what this past week was actually like for you? You saw the Dark Room, and people die, and the world nearly end, and the only person who knows, the only person you could trust, is being lowered into the grave. And worst she died thinking that you had abandoned her, for Seattle, and never came back. You cry, and Joyce pats you on the back, and that makes it all worse.

It only takes a few months for you to drop out of Blackwell. Blackhell, more like. At least, that’s what you tell your parents. Truth is one evening you’ve had enough, break through a window, steal the principle’s money, and use it to get wasted. Someone has to, right, if Chloe can’t? And then you're expelled and it’s right back up to Seattle.

The next few years pass in a haze of alcohol, and weed, and then, gradually, harder drugs too. Your parents force you to go to therapy, eventually. You spend most of the time staring blankly at the therapist, as he stares back at you. Finally he coughs, looks at the piece of paper in front of him, and starts talking.

“So, I see you’re having issues with increasing substance use, Maxine.”

“Max.”

“Oh, okay, Max. Why is that happening?”

“My best friend came into my heart, and tore it out. And it’s my fault.”

“Your best friend? Who was that?”

“Chloe,” you say, numb to the world.

“Chloe? I don’t see any mention of her on my chart, Max. Who is she?”

“Who was she, you mean. She lived back in Arcadia Bay.”

“Oh, back when you were kids, then, years ago. Who was she back then?”

You stare at him again, blankly, for the rest of the hour. You do not go back to therapy again.

It’s when you move onto heroin that your parents finally kick you out, and you get used to being homeless. This is what you deserve, right? You did the right thing, and saved all those people. But Chloe tore out your heart, and it is your fault. In some deep part of your mind you hope one of these days you’ll overdose, but you never do. Some fucking miracle, you think. You wish you had your powers, for robberies, and shit, but you don’t and somehow, you still manage to survive.

Jefferson and Nathan get out of jail. You don’t understand it but Sean Prescott and his army of lawyers probably have something to do with it. And also, since when do you deserve justice? But Chloe deserved better. Chloe deserved the world. Your heart is torn out of your chest, and it is their fault. So you make a call to David Madsen, and you both agree to make justice, one way or another.

He gets Nathan in Arcadia Bay. He calls afterwards, and says it’s done, and you don’t ask questions. You just hang up, walk up to Jefferson as he walks through Seattle, and tap him on the shoulder.

“This is for the Dark Room, you son of a bitch. This is for Chloe.”

He doesn’t recognize you before you put a bullet in his eyes. You don’t try to run after that. They’ll find you, you know, and you don’t deserve any better. Instead you step out into traffic, and hold your hand up, as the eighteen-wheeler barrels down on you.

And then you feel it. You don’t know why. Old gods of Arcadia Bay, and their secrets. Mad science. The devil. But for whatever reason you feel it again, and you see time itself rewind, as the power comes spiraling back to you, like it has been restrained all these long years. Like it is a pent up river building behind a dam, waiting to be let free, and flood everything below it. It’s back, and you control time.

You still let them take you prisoner, of course. You don’t deserve any better. You get life, and you don’t fight it. You don’t touch your power, letting it build, and build, and build. You get in shape, ripped, even, and learn to fight. And one night, when you feel like your heart is breaking, you finally tell your story, your whole story, so far, to the old senile woman you share your cell with. She won’t remember the next day. She won’t judge. She can’t, and you feel like your heart is breaking.

You did nothing wrong, you insist. You saved all those people. That is objectively the better choice, right? And yet you can’t sleep at night. You can’t forget her. You keep dreaming about her, and her blue hair, and her lips, and the life that could have been yours. What would you have done together? Adopted? Gotten married? Gone on vacations, and made each other dinner? What?

“She sounds like a bitch,” the old woman says, and just like that you start connecting the dots.

Chloe tore your heart out, and you did nothing wrong. And if you did nothing wrong, then it has to be her fault. She came storming back into your life, made you fall in love with her, and then she has the audacity to keep tormenting you, from even after her death. If she had just died in peace, in that bathroom, if she had just let you go, then you never would have felt like this. You would never have developed your powers. She would be a dead childhood friend, unfortunate, but nothing catastrophic, and your life would have been different. Et in Arcadia Ego. If Arcadia Bay was heaven, then Chloe was the death in it, and you will be the one guarding the secrets of god, and knowledge of that week that never should have happened.

I Tego Arcana Dei. It is Chloe Price’s fault, and you have your power. You know what you have to do.

You start your training in small, local time shifts. Reverse time, watch the clock, reverse again, and again, and again. Get a headache, get a nosebleed, and keep going. Get tougher. Learn how to control it. Tiny increments, and bigger chunks of time, reversing them over, and over again. Push on the universe, when your vision burns and blurs into static, when you think you can’t go any further backwards, push further. And then do it again.

Freeze time, like you did with Kate. Hold it in place. Keep holding it. Breath, get a nosebleed, get the migraine, and keep going. Shave your head with a straight razor. Keep training. Keep training. Keep training. Your heart is gone, and you will make her pay. Hold onto the fury in your head, instead of your heart.

By the time you break out of prison nothing in this timeline can stop you. Freeze bullets, move them, keep going. The guards are useless. But this isn’t the real challenge. You know that the real challenge is just beginning.

It gets hard to keep track of time, as you practice with the photos. Small, at first, then going to more, and more, and more places. Keep changing things. Keep manipulating. Turn time around your fingers. You spend time as a twenty year old, and a thirty year old, and a two year old. How many years have you really seen, subjectively? Three decades? Four? More? You can only guess, but it works. You start to learn how time works, and probe the machinery of the universe itself, poking and prodding at it. You never can find out where your powers come from, they may always be a secret, but you can and do become a time master. You have more power than you thought, back then, far more power, and you keep on finding new ways to use it. And as the years blur out into never-ending static, and the burn at the edges of your vision becomes permanent, you form a plan.

There’s infinite you, you know. Infinite Maxes in infinite universes, spiraling away forever. But some are very close. Some timelines you can push on, feel the warm static of them, as you swim up and down the timeline. And one draws your attention. You can feel it. You don’t know how else to describe it. And you keep pushing at it, poking at it, until you find a weak spot, and break through, near the Fremont Troll, in Seattle.

Chloe and you, another you, a weak you, that couldn’t save the people, and Arcadia Bay, are both alive, and together in this reality. You break through when your powers return, here, and for a second, frozen cold in the static, you see yourself, younger, stupider, making a car crash reverse. Then you get kicked out of the timeline, like a body rejecting a foreign object, but the damage is already done. There is a hole, there, for you to come and go through, and manipulate the timeline towards the conclusion you want, one where the other you, the you that married that punk-ass dyke, goes back in time, and accidentally gives Chloe the powers instead.

And then, once you see that Chloe has them, and the timeline has rearranged itself around that, and the storm is on its way, it’s easy. Punch your way in, tear apart Chloe, psychologically speaking. Convince her that she’s worthless, and that she needs to die. It’s destiny. It’s what she deserves. It shouldn’t be hard to convince her, because it’s the truth.

You have that photo. You’ve stolen it from the past, and kept it with you all those years, and all the other pieces of the plan are in place. All Chloe needs to do is listen to you, listen to reason, go back, and let herself die. Then Max, you in the past, will never get powers, and you will not have your heart torn out, and all the hurt, and pain that is you, that is Max Caulfield, will be gone forever, and the universe will go back to the way it is supposed to be.

Some moments last forever, but some flare out with love, love, love.

You fall through time, and space, and nightmares, and light and darkness, listening to the other Max, Bay Max, tell her story. It reminds you of when, not too long ago, and yet still worlds away, you listened to Max, your Max, tell her story. Fuck, you still are mad, but you are going to get back to her somehow.

“Is that all you have, then?”

“Yes, but isn’t it clear? You’re nothing but a piece of shit, white trash dyke from a shithole town. You’re a burden on her. You’re a traumatized wreck, and she deserves so much better than you. It’s destiny. Just go and die, Chloe Price.”

You find yourself laughing, despite everything.

“Seriously, you son of a bitch, is that really the best you have?”

“Yes,” she growls, “don’t you see the logic of it?”

“Listen,” you say, still chuckling, “first, I don’t know if any of this, if you, this weird-ass void thing I’m in, or anything is even real, or if you’re just a result of my own brain fizzing out, with fatigue, and exhaustion, with whatever drugs Alt Chloe was on, and with general time bullshit. Second, all this stuff you’re telling me? About me being the worst thing ever? I’ve told myself worse. I’ve lived in my own head for years. But you know what? I’ve had help. I have medication, and a therapist, and most of all a wife who loves me more than anything else in this fucking universe. And despite all her flaws I love her too. So fuck you, and fuck whatever timeline you crawled out of. I’m not going to go kill myself.”

“Oh,” she says with a laugh, “but I’m not done with you yet. Do you think you plan this for years, and don’t come up with a fail safe, babe? See you later, I have a hot date with a hipster chick at the Two Whales.”

Suddenly you are waking up, and you recognize this shit. Blackhell. And, holy shit, the devil himself, Jefferson, is sitting there, talking, like nothing has happened. He’s giving a speech, no, a lecture.

“Seriously, though, I could frame any one of you in a dark corner, and capture you in a moment of desperation,” he says.

You are standing up, readying yourself to leap at him, to strangle him, or cut his throat, or do something. You’re not sure. But before you reach him, before you can get there, something big, and red, and heavy hits the outside of the window. A bird smears its blood across the glass, and then another, and another, until the room is tinged red by the light seeping through. And then you recognize what this place truly is.

She talked about it. Not much. But on the really, really bad nights, when she cried, and talked in her sleep for hours, and all you could do was hold her, she said enough for you to connect the dots. Enough for you to piece together what really happened, as you carried her to the lighthouse. This is Max’s nightmare, and you are trapped inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs Referenced:  
> -Spanish Sahara, by Foals.  
> -Love, Love, Love, by the Mountain Goats.


	15. It's Not Fair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for allusions to suicide.

It’s Not Fair

You jump out of your chair, sprinting towards the door, as the blood splatter on the windows, and in fact, everyone else in the classroom, vanishes. Your mind is racing. You’re back to how you were, all the way back then. Blue hair, beanie, Chloe the way Max fell in love with you. And you are desperately trying to remember what she told you about this dream. Gotta get to the Two Whales, you know. Have to get there before the other Max.

“I see you, Chloe Price. Don’t even think about leaving here until we talk about your entry.”

You need to be moving. You need to move now. But you’re Chloe, and you still have your bite, and your venom and you can’t resist. You sprint across the floor, and deck him. Right in the nose, where it would be sure to break, if he were real.

“Go fuck your selfie, Jeffershit,” you say, spitting at him.

And then you’re turning around again, and sprinting out the door into...shit. It looks like the dormitories where Max used to live? There’s only one person who’s around. Kate Marsh, from back then. She seems like she’s crying, but you don’t have time for this.

“Why didn’t you save me, Chloe,” she begins, before you interrupt her.

“Sorry, Kate, but listen, I don’t know if this is some sort of construct made by an evil, future genius, time traveling, nightmare wizard version of my wife or the most intricate shared delusion ever, or something else entirely but whatever it is, you aren’t real. In my timeline, the real timeline, you’ve already figured this all out, but here’s the quick version. You’re hella gay. Now please, move!”

You shove past her. A lot of hallways, you remember. She talked about a lot of hallways, so you know what to expect on the other side, with the more of the same. Another hallway, sprint down it, and, echoing from nowhere you hear your own voice.

“Drumroll please. I present the spare keys to Blackwell. Thank you, step-prick.”

God, you think, even as you grab them, look at the number, and sprint towards the door. Were you really that edgy? Keep sprinting though. Don’t stop. The next hallway you change clothes, to something Rachel used to wear. It doesn’t matter, you already said goodbye to her, and you have to save your wife. Fuck this shit. Keep moving. Then you’re Victoria, and then you’re Max herself, for a bit, and finally you’re back in Blackwell. And everyone’s moving in reverse. Shit, you remember this part from one of the very worst nights with your Max, in your timeline.

You’re still you, despite everything. Not even past you, with her blue hair. Not Alt Chloe, with her prison tattoos. You. With the memento mori blacked out, and your old muscles. And even better, you have Max’s earbuds. As people walk backwards around you, and you keep moving towards the women’s room, you feel compelled to put them in, expecting her usual hipster bullshit.

Instead, you grin, as the punk music blares out. You’re still you, and better than that. Maybe in her dream Max was her, but you’re her butch, and you have the muscles to prove it. You kick down the door to the women’s room, and run headlong into the next bit of this nightmare, with a smile on your face. First on your list to go down is Jefferson, again.

“White dress is the tipping point,” the music blares, as you tackle Warren.

“I’m Principle Wells,” you hear a voice say, but you’re running past him, not paying attention.

“I’m pinned to the open road, with a love so divine I can’t bear,” the woman in your head, sings, as you pass David, old David, and keep on moving, through the dark.

“I’m gonna cut you open, freak,” Frank says, but you don’t care.

“Black fence 'round the skin I can't sleep in, I'm pinching the nerve, it's not fair,” the music blares, deafeningly loud, as you knock out Jeffershit, one more fucking goddamn satisfying time.

“This is for Rachel, you piece of shit,” you say, as you finally get to punch Nathan right in the face.

“The dead grass rivers slipping past, will I miss my chance to go anywhere I wanna go?” The music finishes, on a crescendo, as you catch your breath.

And only then do you see the bottles.

“Nope, do not have fucking time for that. I blame you for this, Max. Now hang on.”

You keep moving, towards the lighthouse, and then the white burning static overcomes you, and the world shifts. And just like that you’re in a goddamn snow globe, on your shelf, watching William leave. Again.

“Keep each other safe, you two, don’t let anyone split up your team,” he’s saying as you watch, and Max, past Max? Alt Max? One of the Maxes burns a photo.

“Come on!” You yell. “I’ve got a therapist to work through my past with, and I need to go fucking save my wife. Get it over with, already.”

The world burns, and fades, and changes around you.

“Oh, hey Kate,” you hear Max, your Max, say, as everything comes back into focus.

You’re in the Dark Room. Tied up. Jesus fucking Christ this must have been what Max went through. It feels intrusive, like you’re digging into all her dark insecurities. Well, maybe they were different, because across from you, on a couch, making out, you see Max, your Max, with her strip of red hair, and her laugh lines, and Kate fucking Marsh.

“Hey Max,” Kate says, “can you believe you spent all those years with Chloe? When everyone really knows you’d be a much better match with me. You aren’t a punk, and you could show a good church girl like me a lot of things.”

“Bullshit, still not working, Bay Max!” You shout.

There’s a flash, like a camera bulb going off, and the scene changes.

“You and I really could become more than friends, Maxine, you know,” Victoria says, as she kisses your wife. “You deserve a high class girl like me.”

“Oh, I know I do,” Max moans.

“Oh, come on!” You shout again, struggling against your bonds. “She’s my wife and I trust her, she’s not gonna fucking cheat on me and you’re going to have to try a lot harder than that.”

There’s another flash.

“I could show you a couple things I learned in prison,” you, well, Alt Chloe, with all of her extra tattoos says, as she shoves Bay Max roughly against the wall.

“Oh, really? Fucking bring it on, Price, because I could show you a few things,” Bay Max says, shoving her back, as she pulls her grey hoodie over her head, exposing all the muscles along her arms. “For instance, just how good a hate fuck really can be.”

“Original, at least,” you say, rolling your eyes, “I’ll give you that fucking much. Did all this psychosexual bullshit really work on Max back then? You aren’t going to be able to stop me.”

There’s another flash, and the scene changes yet again.

It’s just Alt Chloe. She sits there, across from you, staring you down, with her tattoos shining in the harsh light.

“You really want to end my timeline, don’t you Chloe?” She says. “What gives you the right?”

“You aren’t real, and the timeline you’re mimicking isn’t real. It’s not mine,” you spit, returning her stare, as you keep working against the tape holding you down.

“And you have the authority to decide that? Am I any less real because I didn’t marry Max? Am I less real because I went to prison? Is my Arcadia Bay less real because it’s gentrified? You will be killing me, Chloe, and killing all those people.”

“No, I will,” you say, with fire. “The universe made that storm. Not Max. Not me. I am just going back to my wife.”

Another flash, and Alt Max is standing there, leaning heavily on her cane.

“Why would you even want to be with me, Chloe?” She says, sadly. “Look at me. I am a bag of bones and trauma. You deserve better than that. The other Max knew that. That was why she changed the timeline. To protect you.”

“Listen,” you say, a bit more softly, “I know you’re just a trick of Bay Max, but even still, you deserve love, and to get better. My Max made an idiotic mistake in a moment of grief. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love her.”

There’s another flash, and there she is, in her grey hoodie, with her shaved head. Bay Max, sitting on the couch.

“You are one annoying bitch,” she says, with venom dripping from her voice. “I’m trying to talk to Max, past Max, me, alone, without you, and you couldn’t just leave well enough alone. You can’t just fucking die and let me set this all right.”

“Go to hell.”

The bindings come loose, and you lunge at her. She curses, and there’s another flash, and you hurtle forward.

You’re here, on the sidewalk outside the Two Whales. A strange light is streaming from behind you, from out over the bay, and you don’t look back at it. You don’t think there is anything good, back there. If it is the secrets of the old gods of Arcadia Bay, then you will just let them stay hidden. All around you is a crowd of people, and you think you recognize some of them from Arcadia Bay. And you are past you, again, with your blue hair, and your jacket, and your beanie. But you know where to go, now. You know you are winning.

You stalk through the doors, and everything is perfectly still. All the people are standing there, but you are done caring about them. Because she is here. Past Max, the Max that came storming back into your life, with her freckles, and her brown hair. And she is here too, Bay Max, wearing yet another skin, and looking exactly like past Max, as she sits at the booth in the diner.

“Dude, do not even fuck with her head,” you say, as you jump feet first into the booth. “She knows what we went through together this week, and you don’t. There’s no way you can break up our team.”

There’s a motion, and past Max vanishes. If you remember what she told you about the nightmare, then she should be close to the lighthouse, now. Assuming, that is, that any of this is real, and that you were sharing a little bit of that space with past Max. Bay Max shifts, back to her muscled, bald self, and stares daggers at you.

“You little shit,” she mutters. “You’re so selfish.”

“What?” You retort, flipping her the bird. “For being stubborn? For loving my wife? For thinking that my little, traumatized queer life is something important? You’re just mad, and you don’t have any power over me anymore.”

The world burns at the edges, and turns into static, as the Two Whales fades out of sight. Your head throbs, and you hear the crashing of thunder, and the roll of howling winds. You open your eyes, and are back in your pickup, outside of Alt Max’s apartment. You’re in Alt Chloe’s body again, Bay Max is gone, and you know what you need to do now. What you’ve always needed to do.

You grab the boombox you got from David, and head out into the storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs Referenced:  
> -It's Not Fair, by The Screaming Females.
> 
> Did you favorite ship end up in the nightmare? Let me know, and thanks for reading. Probably the weirdest chapter, so should make a little more sense moving forward.


	16. Obstacles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for allusions to self harm and disordered eating.

Obstacles

Something is wrong.

You wake up to a world gone grey, and static, and distant, and strange, and you are full of memories you can’t reconcile with each other, and something is wrong.

You remember crying alone in the corner of a room, in the quiet of the evening. You remember her, Chloe, your wife, driving away from you. You remember death, and screwing up, really, really, badly. Shit, did you actually do it? Were you that much of an idiot, Max Price-Caulfield? Did you really try to go back in time, and both stop yourself from going to Arcadia Bay, and also save her? You tried to write yourself out of her history, just like that? You broke her trust, and betrayed her, and she deserved so much better than you.

Something is very, very wrong, and it is you. Et in Arcadia Ego. Did you think that the death’s head moth shirt was a coincidence? Did you think it was a coincidence you fell in love with a girl who loved skulls and wore literal bullets around her neck? You have become death, and you just fucking ended your marriage. You were the death in the heaven, the paradise, that was your relationship with Chloe.

And then you are sitting up, your heart racing, way, way too fast, and your entire body sags, and thrums with pain, and then the other memories you can’t reconcile come flooding back. You remember a day without Chloe. A day without even the thought, even the memory of her. A day where you were still you, after everything, but a version of you that never made friends, never went to Blackwell, never went to college, never got a job, and never came out of her shell. A version of you that was falling apart, couldn’t take care of herself, and loathed the very body she felt trapped in.

You look down at your arms, and the thin markings running across them, some grey and old, and some red and new, and realize to your horror that you are in that body now. You look around, and the world is grey, and hazy, and static. But through it all you see your old apartment, the studio you used to share with Chloe, before you graduated, before you got married, and got a job. It’s filthy. Trash, bottles, and more is piled everywhere, with dust on top of everything. What happened here?

And then the memories of that last day fill you, as you finally connect the dots. The day inside. The day without her. And then, worst of all, you remember when she was there. You stood there, in the doorway, leaning on your cane, with your mask on, as she talked to you, and you didn’t remember her. Not fully. It was like your brain was still adjusting, coming back, finding the power again. You treated her like she was nothing more than your long lost childhood friend, freshly out of prison.

“Chloe,” you sob, sitting on the edge of your filthy bed, and, on instinct, you raise your hand up, to rewind time.

And then you put your hand back down. You don’t feel it. It’s gone. For the first time in years you don’t feel the power spiraling out from you, into whatever mysterious infinities it came from. And only then, when you realize that it cannot possibly be you holding it all in place, do you finally realize that time itself is frozen all around you.

You stand up, and sway in place. Only then do you hear the strangely familiar sound. You grab the cane sitting within arm’s reach, and hobble towards the music, through the frozen time, to a cloudy, dirty window, where a dim grey light is entering your claustrophobic, cluttered apartment. You pull against it, trying to open it, but your withered muscles don’t cooperate with you.

“Let’s say sunshine for everyone, but as far as I can remember, we’ve been migratory animals, living under changing weather,” the music sings.

You feel your bones ache, and you want to scream, to cry, to shout, to do something. You want to bang on the universe, and ask it for answers, and explanations. You want to apologize. But finally the window slides open, with a harsh, grating sound, and you can look out and see her standing there.

Well, she’s not your Chloe, you recognize that in a moment. She has less muscles for one. She has more tattoos, in all sorts of completely garish hues, and has not blacked out her memento mori. But as she stands there, in the parking lot outside your apartment, holding a boombox over her head like she’s in a sappy romance, she is still Chloe. You’re so happy you almost start crying again. You almost don’t even notice the bizarre sight out all around you.

You’re in Seattle, but you recognize the storm. It’s the same storm that destroyed Arcadia Bay, in another timeline, years ago. The same lightning, the same wind, the same tornado dominating the horizon, and closing in on you like it is hungry. You’d recognize it anywhere, you’ve seen it in your nightmares enough, after all. But you have not seen it like this, frozen in time, static, and grey, like the world was when you were running to save Kate, years ago, at Blackwell.

“Someday we will foresee obstacles, through the blizzard, through the blizzard. Today we will sell our uniforms, and live together, live together.”

“Holy shit, Max,” the other Chloe says, as she moves, and the rest of the universe stays still around her, “this actually worked? I was, like, almost entirely making it up as I went along. Boombox, 80's cliches, hipster bullshit songs, and hoping that even if you didn’t have the power in this timeline, you’d still have been around it enough for it to rub off on you.”

“Which Chloe are you?” You say, feeling tears welling up in your eyes, “I’ve seen so many of them. I need to know.”

“Holy shit,” she mutters again, finally letting the boombox drop, “you’re not Alt Max, you’re, you’re my fucking Max. You’re my fucking wife, aren’t you? Pidge, Chanterelle, Butterfly, Maxamalia. Super Max. All those nicknames. You...you remember me? Married life? Leaving, and, well, whatever the hell you did that screwed up this timeline so bad?”

“Yes,” you say, and now you are crying, for real, “I do. Oh god, Chloe, I am so, so sorry I did that. I was stupid.”

“Yeah, you were,” she says, and you know you deserve that, “and I’m sorry too. But right now we’re running out of time to fix this all. So is it okay if I come up there, and get you up to speed?”

“Yes,” you nod, through your tears, “yes, please.”

“We played hide and seek,” the music plays, and you know Chloe picked it because you love it, since it’s not punk music, like she likes, “we were younger, we were younger.”

You hobble over to the door, the storm still frozen in place out your open window, and unlock it. You remember the toll it took on your body, all those years ago, freezing time in place, and giving you enough time to reach Kate as she stood on the edge of the roof. This must be killing Chloe, or close to it, then. But, then, before you can get lost in your own thoughts, there she is.

She doesn’t stop, in her running. She doesn’t pause. She might be in a different body, and you might be in a different body, and you might both be stuck in a nightmarish alternate timeline, but you would know that hug anywhere. Big, strong, protective. That hug woke you up morning, after morning, after morning, through the bad dreams, and the best times, and the camping trips, and everything else. That hug held you after the storm, after you graduated, after you moved, after your wedding. That hug belongs to Chloe, your Chloe. She is your wife. She is your Chloe.

And then, she is lifting your chin up, her hands wrapping around your head, and weaving through your matted, long, thinning hair, and she is kissing you. It is exactly like it always is. A kiss only your wife could give you. A kiss only Chloe could give you Soft, gentle, passionate, the same way she always is. You taste her, and linger there, for a long minute, before you finally open your eyes and see the blood streaming down from her nose.

“Chloe,” you say, feeling the tears inside you choke your throat, almost too much to bear, “I am so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. It was a moment of desperation, and I thought you’d be better off without me. I am so, so very sorry.”

“Yeah, you did screw up. Big time,” she says, with a grimace. “But listen, I got these powers like, this morning, or so? From my perspective at least. And I’m not great with them, and right now I’m really, really, really trying to not let time start up again, or I think this storm will kill us very, very fast, so you kinda need to save the apologies for later, alright, and listen to what I have to say right now. And also probably listen to me get made later. You can’t save me, Max, not this time. You just gotta follow my lead, and tell me how I can save you, and I will keep us both safe. I have a plan.”

“Okay,” you say, wiping your eyes, “but when we get out of this, when you get us out of this, I will give you the apology you deserve.”

“You better.”

“What’s the plan?”

“Well, first, do you know where the photo you used to screw all this up would be? In this timeline, at least. Probably some time when you didn’t decide to go to Blackwell instead of actually going, I’m guessing?”

“I, uh,” you begin, as you search through your already fading memories of this alternate timeline, “I think it might be in my parent’s apartment.”

“Alright, good, we need to get there. Can you walk down the stairs to my pickup?”

“I’m not sure,” you say, looking down at your withered body, “I don’t think this version of Max was really taking care of herself well.”

“Yeah, no shit,” she says. “Alright, fine, I’ll carry you.”

“You’ll carry me?”

“Yeah, I will.” she says, her voice flat. “I mean, I’m your butch, and what did you think butches were for?”

And then she grunts, and holds her head, and you feel time returning. The world is no longer grey, and static, but living, and you can feel the wrath of the storm lashing out on Seattle outside, as it nears you.

“Chloe, are you okay?” You say, desperately.

“Yeah, just couldn’t hold onto it anymore,” she says, standing up straight, and trying to give you a confident, reassuring grin, that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Now come along, little butterfly.”

She picks you up, like you weigh nothing. Maybe the you in this timeline really does weigh nothing, at least, nothing to her. She used to love to carry you around your apartment, back in your timeline, sometimes to the kitchen to feed you, and sometimes to bed, to do other things to you. You can’t believe you nearly gave all that up. And this version of Chloe might be different. The body she is in is from a different timeline. But despite that, and the storm, and everything else, you are glad your wife is here with you again.

“Is there anything else I should know?” You yell over the storm.

“Two things,” she yells back, as she nears her truck, “first if you see a really muscly, bald version of you, you should know that she’s evil. It’s a really long story, and I’ll tell you it all when we’re back in our timeline, but just don’t trust her.”

“Got it. What’s the second thing?”

“That I love you, Max Price-Caulfield, until the end of time.”

“I love you too, Chloe Price-Caulfiend. Until the end of time, we are wives in crime,” you say, leaning against her chest.

“And wives in time,” she says, completing the phrase, and you hear the grin in her voice, even through the roar of thunder, and wind and rain, and the tornado closing in on you both.

Despite everything. Despite the storm, and the time travel bullshit, and the mistakes you have made, you are happy she is here with you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs Referenced:  
> -Obstacles, by Syd Matters.
> 
> Hey look, those two crazy kids back together again.


	17. I'm Singing Songs About the Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for allusions to suicide and death.

I’m Singing Songs About the Future

Trees crash down around you, as you weave through the debris, heading towards Max’s parents’ apartment. Thunder low overhead rumbles, and your head is throbbing. Static seems to swim on the edges of your vision. Is this what it felt like for Max, years ago, when she chose you, for the first time? Did she hurt like you? Did it feel like the end of the world back then, the same way it does now?

And despite everything, and the look of her, so frail, and barely even alive, in this timeline, you’re happy. You turn your radio on, and some soft guitar song comes on, through the whining hiss of distortion. Rain pours down on the truck, and the windshield wipers can’t even keep up, as wind batters you back and forth. And you’re happy. Your wife is with you, and you’re going to make everything right.

“I’m somewhere,” the radio sings, through the sharp whine, “you’re somewhere, I’m nowhere, you’re nowhere.”

“Do you think you can freeze time again, Chloe?” Your wife asks, looking out at the devastation. “I’m not sure if I’ll be able to walk through that storm.”

“Yeah, baby,” you say, smiling across at her, “one more time. We’re on the final chapter of this story, I think. Or close to it.”

“Any idea why I have my memories of the other timeline? Or why I’m immune to you freezing time, if I don’t have the power here?”

“I’ve heard a few theories along the way. I’ll tell you when we get back.”

“Okay.”

“Goodbye to the children we’ll never meet,” the radio keeps on singing, “and the ones we left behind.”

“Alright,” you say, staring straight ahead, “brace yourself for this.”

You shove your foot into the floor, stepping hard on the gas. You give your pickup as much momentum as you can, given that it’s such a piece of shit in this timeline. Oh, well, if this all goes well then Alt Chloe won’t need it again, and if it doesn’t you’re going to die, so it doesn’t really matter if it’ll pass inspection.

You crash through the glass windows, and the entrance awning to Max’s parents’ apartment building, and, even as you’re still in motion, hurtling into the dingy, dimly lit lobby, towards the wall of locked mailboxes, you reach out your hand, and freeze time around you. Everything goes grey, and you realize it worked. You glance over at your wife, in Alt Max’s body, making sure she’s okay.

“Hey, babe,” she says, looking up at you, “I really don’t feel so great.”

“Shit,” you mutter, as you push open the car door, and run around to her side, sliding over the hood of the truck, frozen in place, halfway across the floor. “What’s going on?”

“Not sure, but, ouch, yeah, having chest pains. This is what Alt Max gets for treating herself like this, I guess. What I get.”

“Shit, shit, shit,” you mutter, again and again, as you pull her out of the passenger seat, “we are so, so close. Don’t die just now, Max, I’ve nearly got this.”

“How?” She asks, as you carry her in front of her. “Time’s frozen, and the moment you unfreeze it that truck will crash, and the storm will probably destroy this building. But with it frozen you can’t take the elevator.”

“Stairs it is, then,” you say, already running towards them, wishing that Alt Chloe had worked out more while she was in prison.

“All dozen flights?”

“All dozen flights, now, excuse me, I’m probably going to be out of breath very, very soon.”

“All while holding time frozen in place?”

“Listen, Max,” you say, trying to prepare yourself, “no one ever said it was easy being your wife. Let’s do this.”

You take a deep breath, say a quick prayer to the old gods of Arcadia Bay, or anyone else who might be bending an ear your way, and start running. It isn’t easy. But then again, being butch, being Max’s wife, hell, just living in your own head, with all the voices, and all the insecurities there, isn’t easy. But you are one stubborn son of a bitch, and nothing good in this life is easy. Still, you really, really wish that Alt Chloe had worked out more. Bay Max went to prison and got shredded, why couldn’t the other you bother to do the same?

You feel nearly dead by the time you reach the twelfth floor. Your head is pulsing rhythmically, and feels like it is going to explode. Blood is running continuously from your nose, down into your mouth, and past your chin. Your heart thumps erratically, your legs ache, and your lungs feel ready to give out entirely. Bay Max said that too much time travel could fry your brain, and you feel it now. You feel every inch of that storm, bearing down on you, every gust of wind, every lightning bolt, as you hold time in place, and keep it all frozen.

And worse than all of that is Max. She encouraged you, in that gentle, persistent way she has, for the first seven flights of stairs. But now she has fallen silent, and still, against your chest. Damnit, Alt Max, you think, why couldn’t you take better care of yourself? You want to stop, and do something, to help her, to save her, but you can’t. It’s too late, and you need to keep going or you’ll both die.  
You squeeze past Max’s parents as they run from their apartment, and you pause, and gasp.

The storm is upon you. It has torn the far wall off the front of the building. It must have happened mere moments before you froze time. And there is the tornado, silhouetted by a lightning strike, looking so close you feel you could almost reach out and touch it. You wonder what that would be like. Would it feel like fury of time itself, the universe even, falling apart and coming undone?

But you know you don’t have time. All of their things, all of the stuff Max’s parents own, is getting blown by the wind, and pulled out into the tornado. Including their photographs. There seem to be hundreds of them, frozen on the wind, floating in midair. One of these must be the precious photograph you need, the one that Max used to screw all this up. But you can’t know which, and you can’t hold time still much longer.

“Come on, baby,” you say, shaking Max gently, “which photo is it you used? I need to know.”

“Chloe,” she says, her eyes fluttering open, as she looks up at you, a smile so calm, so peaceful, and so beautiful it almost takes your breath away crossing her face, “you came back for me.”

“Wives in time, babe,” you say frantically. “Now please. Which photograph did you use to change the timeline?”

“‘S the restaurant,” she mutters, as her head tilts back, and her eyes close.

“Max, Max!” You shout, your voice rising into a scream. “Do not die on me, okay? I get it now, I get what it must have been like to watch me die, all those times, and I’m sorry, but I’m just not ready to deal with that, please!”

She does not respond.

And there, in front of you, like it was meant to be, you see a picture, hovering in front of the tornado, and you connect the dots.

It’s a picture of Max, in a restaurant booth, somewhere, when she was younger, with her parents. It sat on your wall, for years, next to your wedding photos, and your photos at Pride, and all the other ones in your timeline. It’s from the time she told her parents she wanted to go back to Arcadia Bay, to Blackwell. You asked her, once, why it was so important to her, and she had just taken you by the hand, kissed you on the cheek, and said:

“Because that was where I fell in love with you all over again.”

That has to be it. As the storm stands frozen in place, and you hold your wife in the ruins of her home, you focus on the picture, feel the power, her power, spiral out from you, and you dive in.

That’s it, you think, as reality emerges from the static around you, you are done trying to understand the laws of time travel. Time travel is bullshit. That’s the only explanation for why you are the old you, with your blue hair, standing on a street you don’t even know, somewhere in some city. Was this where you were when Max was telling her parents about Blackwell? And where the fuck is she? Where is your wife and what the fuck is going on?

“Stop poking at time, Price,” you hear a familiar, harsh voice say, “you really don’t understand it.”

“What are you doing here?” You ask, whirling around and seeing Bay Max slouching against a restaurant window.

“Giving you one last chance to not be a selfish bitch and finally do the right thing,” she says, stepping forward, and handing you a familiar picture of a blue butterfly. “Try not to be an asshole.”

You watch, as she fades into static, and then vanishes, returning to whatever weird void she goes to when she’s not tormenting you. You still flip her the bird, just to feel better. But as you do, you see Max through the restaurant window. It’s her, with her short brown hair, and her freckles. Past her, the way she looked when you fell back in love with her. You press your face into the glass, trying to get her attention, and overhear her as she talks to her parents.

“Listen, mom, dad, I know it’s expensive, but you’ve seen my grades,” she says, “I promise I will get a scholarship, okay? What? Why do I want to return to Arcadia Bay so badly? Because I have spent too long away from Chloe Price, and I’m tired of it. Think it over, and give me one second.”

She stands up, walks towards the door of the restaurant, and then is suddenly running towards you, and hugging you the way only she can.

“Max?” You say, trying to find words. “Is that you?”

“Yes, Chloe, it’s me.”

“No, like, are you my Max? Not Alt Max, or past Max, or Bay Max? Are we, uhh, married?”

“Yes, you dork,” she says, kissing you lightly on the cheek.

“But, uhh, how does that work? Did you travel back in time? Or did I?”

“I think we both did,” she says with a shrug, “but I’m not sure. Time travel is bullshit. But it all should be okay now. I’ll go back to Arcadia Bay, I’ll meet you, and everything should be back to normal.”

“What about the bathroom?” You say, still holding onto her waist, afraid to let go of her again. “What will happen there? Like, will I shoot Nathan? Who will get the power?”

“I’m not sure,” she says with a shrug, “but there’s only one way to find out.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” you say, as you show her the picture.

“What the hell? How did you…”

“It’s a really long story, Max,” you say, interrupting her. “But just, well, hear me out, because this is going to sound insane. Last time, on the cliff, under the lighthouse, I told you that you were the only one who could make the choice whether I’d live or die. And you chose me. And for years I’ve struggled with that, but I am done struggling. I am not afraid anymore. You screwed up, Max, and I still love you. And I forgive you. Not because you deserve it, but because I do. Because I deserve to have a good life, with a wife who I adore, and who loves me back. I am done second guessing your choice. This time I want to make it together. I choose our life, Max, forever, until the end of time. Do you?”

“I do,” she says, meeting your gaze, with tears in her eyes.

And then you are both jumping back, once more. A picture inside a picture. A piece of time inside another pocket of time. More bullshit. You hear yourself, and Nathan, fighting, but you don’t care. Your hand hits the fire alarm, saving your life, and sending you down a path that will take you to the lighthouse, overlooking Arcadia Bay, and beyond, to your days and nights on the road, to your own apartment, to your wedding, and to where you are today. You are making that choice, this time, with her, and you don’t care. Because as the white void envelopes you, and reality burns and tears, and static fills the edge of your vision, you are kissing her. And you love her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs Referenced:  
> -Santa Monica Dream, by Angus & Julia Stone
> 
> This time Chloe chooses her life too. Did it work, though? Stick around and find out! We're in the final stretch now!


	18. After the Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for allusions to suicide.

After the Party

You blink, and wake up. The salty, fresh smell of the ocean fills your nose, and the sounds of the crashing surf far below fill your ears. Gulls are flying overhead, and the wind is cool and crisp. You are standing under that intensely familiar lighthouse, the one you see in your dream, and above the sea. Arcadia Bay is spread out far below you. Children are playing on the beach, down there, and you see a pod of whales off the coast. Far in the distance, over the Pacific, the sun is setting in a blaze of orange light, reflecting off the waves.

“It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?”

You walk forward, and sit down on the bench next to the speaker, joining her in looking out over the scene. You are yourself, again, despite everything. Chloe Price-Caulfield, with her shaved head, and her old memento mori tattoo blacked out, and her old muscles, earned by hours of hard work. And the speaker is Max, the other Max, Bay Max, in her grey hoodie, staring out at the world spread out in front of you.

“It is beautiful,” you say, with a sigh, “but it isn’t real. Just like you aren’t real. This isn’t reality.”

“Reality is a relative term.”

“You know, just for once, with you, I’d like an easy answer,” you say, running your head over your prickly hair. “But despite your stubborn refusal to speak plainly, you are still dead fucking wrong. Reality isn’t relative. It’s concrete, and I know what it is.”

“Then what is it, Chloe Price?” She asks, and there’s a new tone in her voice, something you haven’t heard before.

“Reality is waking up to bad coffee. Reality is loving someone who will break your trust. Reality is making up, and working out the tough things, and staying together, and talking through the bad times. Reality is engine oil under my fingernails, and pandemics, and laughing despite it all. Reality is rocking out on our bed to the Menzingers blaring from laptop speakers with my wife in our underwear, and going to sleep sweaty, and tired, and a little tipsy, and repeating it all over again the next chance we get. Reality is me and Max, together, after the storm. After Arcadia Bay. After everything. Reality is me, and her, and us.”

“And if that’s reality, then what am I?” She asks, and you recognize that tone now; she’s tired.

“I have a few theories. You could just be a delusion in my head, that’s the simplest explanation. Maybe you’re some part of my own guilt, and insecurities, yelling at me. Or maybe you’re some part of Max, brought to life by her superpowers, I don’t know. Or maybe you really are some sort of time traveling, dream controlling wizard version of my wife from the future who hates me for no logical reason. But I suspect, like a lot of other things in life, I’ll never really know the answer. What’s that phrase you like? I Tego Arcana Dei, right? That’s what you’d say? Well maybe you are just one of those secrets that the old gods of Arcadia Bay, or whoever else is out there, want to keep secret from me. But I can live with that.”

“How can you?”

You sigh, again, and lean forward on the bench.

“For the same reason I told you earlier, when you were trying to worm your way into my brain. Because I have people who care for me. Stoners, mechanics, friends who look out for me. I have therapy, and meds, and hobbies. And most of all I have my wife, my Max. That’s how I live with reality, with the voices in my head, and with myself. With everything. And a lot of practice, too."

There is a long pause, before she speaks again. Out over the water the sun just touches the horizon, as someone far away flies a kite above the surf.

“This is what it would’ve looked like, you know?” She says, after a while, her voice exhausted, like she can barely keep talking. “After you died, after I went back in time, and let you die, this is what I saw. Arcadia Bay at peace. Am I such a bad person for thinking that this was the better choice?”

“I don’t know,” you say, turning and looking at her. “I’m not a philosopher. I can’t weigh one life against another. But I do know that this didn’t happen. This sunset, this timeline, you, it isn’t real. Reality is the fact that she, you, Max, chose me, and my life, our life, and I am glad you did.”

You have hated her. You haven’t known her for long. Maybe like, a day, honestly, but in that time she’s tried to dig into your worst insecurities, and get you to kill yourself, and that’s more than enough reason to hate her. Hell, if she isn’t simply a manifestation of those insecurities, then she might be an evil future version of your wife. But right now, as the light of the setting sun plays across her face, you can’t hate her.

Because she’s Max, right? Whatever else she is, she is still Max. Some version of her, at least. And Max is your wife, and the woman you love, until the end of time. The woman you married. The woman you promised your life to. And right now you are acutely aware of how old she looks. She has wrinkles, and deep bags under her eyes. But more than anything else she looks tired.

“So what happens now?” She asks, as the sun sets further and further beneath the horizon.

“To me?” You say. “I’m not sure. If this is a dream, or a nightmare, then I guess I wake up in the bed of my truck. If it really happened then I probably go back to whatever reality gets spit out of all this time travel bullshit. Either way I am going back to my wife. My Max. As for you? I have no fucking idea. You go and fade out into the static, or you go back to your timeline, or you go back into my subconscious, or maybe you keep haunting me and my dreams forever. I don’t know.”

“Chloe,” she says, almost like she’s embarrassed to ask you something so openly, “before this ends, I have to ask, why do you love her? Your Max, why her?”

“I mean,” you say, stalling for time as you try to put such an enormous question into words, “don’t you first have to ask what love is, in the first place?”

“Okay, then what is love?”

“Love is,” you begin, pause, and then continue, as the words come spilling out of you, “love is the way she smells when she’s sweaty. Love is her in cooking in our kitchen. Love is knowing I’ll wake up next to her each night I fall asleep. Love is her heart beating, and her lungs breathing, and her staying alive. Love is...well, I don’t know. I’m not a poet. But love is our life together.”

“Then why do you love her?”

“Because I’m Chloe, and she’s Max. Because she’s a great listener, and has a dorky sense of humor. Because she’s a nerd, and romantic, and sweet, and shy. Because she’s my best friend. Because she’s always been there for me, and I know she always will. Because she’s cute, and beautiful, and has horrible taste in movies and music. Because she’s Max, and what other choice do I have but to love her as best as I can? Because she is, well, because you are who you are, Max, and I wouldn’t change a single thing. I love you.”

She doesn’t say anything, but, before turning away and looking back out to the sea, you see tears forming in her eyes.

“I don’t know if you ever realized it, but you’ve rubbed off on me, Chloe,” she says, as she pulls out a pair of earbuds. “Including your taste of music. Would you want to listen to a song with me?”

“I’d love to,” you say.

In your ear the punk song starts, loud, sad, happy, defiant, and bittersweet all at once. Over the Pacific the sun finally dips beneath the horizon, in a brilliant flash of green. And as the light fades from the sky, and the song screams on, you reach across the bench, and take Max’s hand.

“We put miles on these old jean jackets,” the singer shouts, “got caught up in the drunk conversations, but after the party, it's me and you, after the party, it's me and you.”

“Don’t forget me, Chloe?” She says, squeezing your hand, as the now familiar static burning fills the edges of your vision.

“I won’t, Max,” you reply. “And I’ll see you very soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs Referenced:  
> -After the Party, by The Menzingers.
> 
> So, uhhhh, I was gonna hold off but I have zero impulse control. This chapter is already written, as are the next two (I combined the penultimate and the final chapter together). But I still have to edit them. Should post them later today. Enjoy!


	19. To All of You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chloe comes home.

To All of You

You blink, and wake up.

“Shit, shit, shit,” you say, sitting bolt upright, your head pounding.

It takes a minute for your eyes to adjust to the light, and to rub the gunk out of them. You blink, and blink again, and then finally take in the scene around you.

You’re sitting in the back of your truck, your pillow where your head was laying just seconds before. It’s early morning, and mist is rolling over you. You stand up, startling a little heard deer, and then look around you. Nothing looks like the other timeline, but, then again, there’s nothing really here to tell you that. You are in the middle of nowhere, with no gentrified Arcadia Bay, or anything like that. Your hair is still short and prickly.

Well, no, there actually are things you can use to tell which timeline you are in. Your truck is your own. It’s painted, and refurbished lovingly, the way you put hours and days into doing, and Alt Chloe never did. And your tattoo, your memento mori, the one you got years ago, when you felt you were lost in hell, is blacked out with big, dark scrawls. You sigh with relief. This has to be reality. This has to be you going back to your timeline. Or maybe, more likely since it seems like you just spent one day here, this is you just waking up.

It was all just a dream.

Right?

There’s only one way to really find out, and as you think of it you fumble in the pockets of your hoodie, and drag out your phone. It’s dying, and your fingers fly across it, typing out the number you know by heart, and memorized years ago. Then you are putting it up to your ear, and you hear her voice on the other end.

“Chloe?”

“God, fuck,” you say, already feeling the tears in your eyes, “you’re you, right Max? You’re my Max?”

“Yes,” she says, and you can hear her choking up. “Yes, Chloe, I am.”

“My phone’s dying, baby,” you say hurriedly. “But I’m coming back home to you. Please, I need to know, do you remember what happened?”

You wait, and you hear nothing. You look at your phone, and curse when you see it’s dead. You leap out of the bed of your truck, unlock the door, leap inside, and listen as the engine purrs to life. Then you’re turning the wheel, and the nose of your truck around, swinging it northward, towards where you know she is waiting for you, back in your home.  
On instinct you turn on the radio, and fiddle around until you can find some decent punk music blaring over the FM.

“On the lonely end of history,” the singer shouts, as loud as he can, “swingin’ and swayin’ to the murder mystery. Rhyme and reason fled the crime scene, of new penthouses next to tents in the street.”

Back roads take you through tiny towns, clustered around cheap grocery stores, lonely gas stations, and tiny churches. You pass people walking along the side of the road, and some hold out their thumbs. A couple climb into the bed of the pickup, and you give them a ride for a few miles. You look out for cops, even as you gun the engine, getting far greater speed than you were able to in the other timeline, as you sprint back home.

“Driving through the Bible Belt,” your radio yells, harmonizing with the sound of your wheels, “billboards claiming how Jesus felt. Oh, how’d his words confuse themselves? With cranks for Christians in powerful positions.”

The back roads and tiny towns give way to bigger and better things. You pass chain restaurants again, and outlet stores with packed parking lots. Stay home, the signs warn you, stay safe. Well Max is my home, you want to tell them. She’s my home, and this is my...what did those bitches in your class call it? This is your nostos. This is your homecoming.

You eat your snacks as you drive, stop to get some gas, and keep on moving north. Eventually you find your way back onto the interstate, speeding as fast as you safely can. The sun climbs into the sky above, and starts setting towards the western horizon. You rush past the country, as the radio keeps on singing.

“To these sing-alongs of siren songs, to oohs to ahhs, to big applause. With all of my anger, I scream and shout, America, I love you, but you’re freaking me out.”

Eventually you reach your home city, and then your exit, and you’re pulling off the interstate. You flip the radio around, and find her favorite channel, where she loves to listen to more of her hipster bullshit. The station where you also like to listen to hipster bullshit too, now. Maybe you rubbed off on her, but she also rubbed off on you, and you smile as you hear the man croon.

“To all of you, American girls, it’s sad to imagine a world without you.”

You know these streets well, and as you pass along it you can’t help but think of the memories you have with her. There is the gas station where you stopped when you first moved here, after Seattle. There’s the restaurant where you got a discount on your receipt for “being the cutest gay couple ever.” There’s the park where she had to stop you from getting in a fight with a goose. Everywhere here, every sidewalk, and parking lot, and streetlight makes you think of her, and thinking of her makes you smile.

“I wish I had an American girlfriend,” the man on the radio says, as you park, pull the key out of the ignition, and run up towards your apartment.

You bang on the door once. Then, just a moment later, you impatiently raise your hand to knock again. But before you can bring it down, the door is getting yanked open, and there she is, hugging you so tightly.

“God, Chloe,” she is saying through tears, “I am so, so sorry. I screwed up, and I’m sorry, and I love you, and I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you did screw up,” you say, holding her head gently cradled in your arms, as she buries her face in your chest.

“Are you going to leave me?”

“Max,” you say, lifting her head up, and looking down, directly into her eyes, “listen to me, because I am only going to say this once. You messed up, and yeah, I’m still mad. And yeah, you need help. Probably some therapy. I don’t know, maybe marriage counseling. But you are my wife, do you understand? I married you on purpose. I am not going to leave you. Ever. I love you until the end of time, okay?”

“Okay,” she says.

And then you are kissing her. Soft, and gentle, at first, and then with growing intensity. Her tongue flicks into your mouth. And you feel the heat there. The passion, and the hunger and want.

“Wait, wait, wait,” you say, suddenly, pulling yourself away from her, “I know where this is going, but first, I really have to ask, what date is it?”

“Uhhh, the day after you left?” She says, confused.

“Oh, thank fucking god,” you say, “then it really was all a goddamn dream.”

“What was a dream?” Max asks, suddenly looking suspicious.

“A dream I had last night,” you say, uncertainly.

“Where, uhh, what happened?”

“Uhhh, it was a different timeline?”

“And I was in Seattle and not doing well, and there was the storm again?” She says, raising an eyebrow.

“Holy shit,” you say, “you remember that? You remember all of that? Then was it fucking real?”

“I don’t see how it could be. There isn’t a missing day on the calendar.”

“But how would we both remember the same dream?” You ask.

You look at her, and you know that the idea running through your head is occurring to her at the same time. You both raise your hands, and for a moment you focus. You feel the power spiral out, into whatever mysterious infinities it came from, and you turn back time, for just a second.

“Shit, Chloe,” she says, looking at you, “I have the power again.”

“No, wait,” you say, trying to make sense of this all, “I was the one turning back time. Unless...do we both have it now?”

“I think so?”

“Huh,” you say with a shrug, after a moment, as you move in to kiss her again, and push her towards your bed, “time travel is bullshit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs Referenced:  
> -America (You're Freaking Me Out), by The Menzingers.  
> -To All of You, by Syd Matters
> 
> Other References:  
> -Nostos is an ancient Greek trope about heroes returning from war.
> 
> And that's more or less the story. I will be posting on more chapter, which is shameless self indulgence, but, just in case you liked reading this fic, then here is my tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/thefiresontheheight
> 
> I also have actually written books, including one that I am looking for an agent to, which is a gay AF YA story about having trauma and killing a god, called Your World Will Fall. I am currently editing another book, which is also gay, about unionizing and prophecies, and is called Reaver Phen is Not Your Friend, and will be looking for beta readers soon. If you'd like to read either one, please feel free to let me know!
> 
> And seriously, thank you so, so much.


	20. Hella Bonus Chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for discussion of drugs.

Hella Bonus Chapter

“So, let me get this straight,” the therapist says, through the laptop screen, “you’re gay, right?”

“I am,” you say, pointing at yourself, “she’s bi.”

“Right, right, and you’re married, that I get,” he says, frowning, “what I’m having a hard time understanding is the, uhhh, rest of it.”

“It’s pretty easy,” you say, smiling, “years ago she got time powers, there was a big storm, then a bunch of time travel bullshit that might’ve been orchestrated by an evil future version of her, or might’ve been a shared nightmare happened, and now I have time powers too. Easy.”

“Okay,” he says, taking a deep breath, “but you don’t want to talk to me about that, right?”

“Nah,” she says easily, “I mean, you’re a relationship counsellor, after all, nothing about time travel.”

“Dear god,” you say, with a laugh, when the call is done, “did you see his face? It looked like he was gonna shit bricks.”

“Better than how my therapist reacted,” she says, standing up from the couch and stretching.

“Hey, she came around eventually. And I’m glad you found her,” you say as you stretch out across the couch. “This is my couch now.”

“Your couch?” She says, with mock outrage, standing there, in her t-shirt and shorts.

“You heard me, Price-Caulfield,” you say sticking out your tongue at her. “Unless you wanna fight me for it.”

“Oh, it is on, Chloe,” she says, with that little light laugh of hers you know so well.

Before you can react, she’s throwing a pillow at your head. You put your hand up, and rewind it back onto the couch.

“Ha! Countered with my vast control over time and space.”

“Hey! No fair using time reverses!”

“Fine, fine, rules of engagement. What are they?”

“No using time travel, no food, and no hair,” she says, with a twinkle in her eye.

“I can live with that. Agreed.”

“Bring it on, punk!”

Before she can react you’re up off the couch, and picking her up by her waist. She laughs, as you carry her over your shoulder into your bedroom, where you can throw her down onto the mattress.

“Once again, Chloe is victorious!” You say, flexing.

“Fight’s not over yet,” she says, crawling to the edge of the bed. “Tickle time.

“Ah, god, no,” you say falling into bed next to her, “she found my one weakness.”

“Is that your only weakness?” She says, as she rolls onto her side, and looks across your pillows at you.

“Well, one of my very few ones.”

“What are the others?”

“For tactical reasons?”

“For purely tactical reasons,” she says seriously.

“Good,” you nod, equally seriously, “glad I can trust you, butterfly. See, I have this horrible weakness for when pretty girls straddle me.”

“Oh,” she says, stoically, “like this?”

As she speaks she shifts, her hips on your hips, as she straddles you, one knee on each side of your waist. For a moment you are stunned by her hair. The way it flows around her, as the sunlight outlines her in gold. The red streak, in the brown. And all of her, really. The curves of her body, and the way she moves. It’s mesmerizing, and you almost forget to respond, and that you are doing a bit.

“Exactly like that,” you say, crossing your arms under your head, “I’m glad no one is here to take advantage of that weakness. It’d truly be horrible.”

“Of course, of course. Out of curiosity, how do you react if one of these hypothetical pretty girls does this?”

As she speaks she leans down, her hair falling around you, and kisses you. You feel the heat of her lips, small at first, and then with blooming intensity, as your tongue finds hers. And then she is kissing you again, and again. And then you are laughing, as you throw your arms up around her.

“God, Max, you are such a fucking tease.”

“What,” she laughs back, as she sits back up, still straddling you, “you mean this wasn’t for solely tactical reasons?”

“Dear god, just let me fuck you.”

“Oh,” she says clearly enjoying herself, as she pulls off her shirt, “you mean like this? You do like the dirty talk, don’t you, my time wife?”

“Wives in time, but also don’t forget, wives in fucking crime.”

“Such dirty language,” she scolds, “is that all that mouth is good for? Talk?”

“Oh,” you say, sitting up and kissing her, before you yank your tank top off, “this mouth does a lot more than talk.”

“Really,” she says, as you reach around to undo her bra, “then you’d better show me.”

“Gladly,” you say, as you roll her over, flipping her onto the bed, as you straddle her, “Maxine Price-Caulfield, I am going to fuck you.”

Somewhere, in another of the infinite timelines…

You hobble to your door, with a sigh, leaning heavily on your cane. Why can’t your parents just leave you alone? You know you don’t have your life together.

“Listen,” you begin, but stop.

There’s a short, tired looking girl, with her dirty blonde hair all piled onto the top of her head smiling at you. A little cross necklace hangs around her throat. She’s cute, you find yourself thinking.

“Oh,” she says, like she’s apologizing, “were you expecting someone else?”

“Yeah, but, uhhh, it’s okay. I’m, uhh, Max. Max Caulfield.”

“Kate Marsh,” she says, smiling, “I’m trying to do some charity work for my church today, is there anything I can help you with today, Max?”

“Uhhh, yeah,” you say, finding yourself blushing, for some reason, “my apartment is kinda a wreck, I guess. I could use some help with that?”

“I’d be delighted,” she says, beaming at you.

...in another timeline…

You sit on the beach, beer in your hand, and belch. Goddamn, Arcadia Bay can go fuck itself.

And then you hear a barking and a dog is running across to you.

“Pompidou?” You ask, as you stand up, and pet the dog. “Where the hell did you come from?”

“I found him,” a deep, husky voice says.

You look at her, as she walks down across the sand in her bare feet. Grey hoodie. Shorts. Her head is shaved, closer even than your head. She’s maybe five or six years older than you, but you know that grizzled, world weary look on her face, and know you have it too. Also, she seems strangely familiar. And dear fucking god is she ripped.

“Thanks,” you reply. “Say, this is a bit of a weird question, but do I know you from prison?”

“No,” she says with a laugh, looking out at the sunset, “I was in one, no doubt, but not with you. You just get out?”

“Yeah,” you say with a burp, “was in there for some bullshit. Weird though, you look really familiar.”

“You too. Nice tattoos.”

“Thanks. Can I offer you a beer?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” she says, taking the offered drink, and sitting down on the sand beside you. “You got a name?”

“Chloe. You?”

“Max. Well, some people call me Bay Max, but you can call me Max.”

“Nice to meet you. So what’s your story, Max?”

“Well,” she says, with a heavy sigh, “I spent a lot of time trying to hunt this one chick down, but I ended up letting her get away, so now I’m not so sure.”

“Hunt her down for revenge or for fun?”

“Bit of both. What about you, Chloe?”

“Well,” you say, flicking a thumb back towards your RV, “for tonight I have a bed, and a shitload of drugs, and time to kill. If you’re interested. After that, head out on the road, see where it takes me. I got a seat beside me, though, if the night goes well and you’re interested in sticking around?”

“I got nowhere better to be,” she says, turning around you and flashing you a hungry smile. “And besides, maybe I can show you a few things.” 

...in another timeline…

“That’s why I always feel like I need to prove something,” you say, sitting on the couch. “Like, there’s this big pressure on me, you know?”

“Fascinating,” the shrink says over his glasses, “tell me, Nathan, about your father?”

...in another timeline…

You adjust your tie, and smile, as you prepare to step out on stage. Most days this is just a job, but today you finally get to do something you enjoy.

“And now!” The voice says. “Our host for the evening, David Madsen!”

“Thank you, thank you!” You say, waving to the studio audience. “Welcome to ‘I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me,’ the only game show where contestants can get the shit kicked out of them on live TV. We have a special guess who will be delivering the beat down, tonight. You all know him, Hawt Dawg Man! And let’s meet our contestants tonight! That’s right, David Madsen, and Sean Prescott!”

You grin, as they step out on stage. This is going to be a good night.

...in another…

“What was your name again?” You shout through the noisy bar, your arm around Max.

“Megan,” she says. “And that’s my wife Graham. Nice to meet you Chloe.”

....in another…

“So let me get this straight,” you say, your arm around Max, “you and your wife are gay and have supernatural adventures?”

“Yep,” Kiesha says, as she sits next to you at the bar.

“Same!” You shout excitedly. “But who are the kids?”

“Oh, one is named Cyrus, and the other is Jeff. They’re from Denton.”

...in another…

“So let me get this straight,” you say, your arm around Max, “you and your wife are gay and have adventures?”

“Yes!” Hester says from across the bar.

“And what was her name again?”

“Oleta.”

...in another…

“So let me get this straight,” you say, your arm around Max, “you and your wife are gay and have adventures?”

“Yes!” Hawke says from the other side of The Hanged Man.

“And what was her name again?”

“Merrill.”

...in another…

“So let me get this straight,” you say, your arm around Max, “you and your wife are gay and have adventures?”

“Yes!” Scathe says.

“And what was her name again?”

“Lucky.”

“And you’re butch?”

“Yup.”

“Same!”

...in another…

“How we looking, Max?”

“Not really shiny, Cap’n Chloe, what with the gorram Reavers on our tail.”

...in another…

“Great Scott!” She says, as she leaps out of the DeLorean, “we’ve got to go back, back to the future Chloe!”

...in another…

“What was that thing?” Max says, as you take cover.

“Looked like a rhino in a spacesuit,” you say, “hell if I know.”

There’s a rhythmic whooshing sound from behind you, and you both whir around. There’s a big blue box there, that you could’ve sworn wasn’t there before. As you watch a woman in a long coat steps out.

“Need a hand?” She asks in a British accent.

“Who are you?” Max asks.

“I’m the Doctor,” she says with a smile.

...in another…

“Alright, Price,” the man across from you says, “answer this question: While walking along in desert sand, you suddenly look down and see a tortoise crawling toward you. You reach down and flip it over onto its back. The tortoise lies there, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs, trying to turn itself over, but it cannot do so without your help. You are not helping. Why?”

...and in the real timeline...

“So we both have powers,” you say, drenched in sweat and naked in your bed, as she curls against you.

“Yup,” Max says.

“And we both remember the other timeline.”

“Also yup.”

“But at the same time that day never happened, and we both just woke up, like it was a dream.”

“Oh my god,” she says, softly punching you in your shoulder, “you’re such a nerd, Chloe. We don’t know if it’s real or not, and I can’t figure out a way of knowing for certain.”

“No, wait,” you say, as an idea occurs to you, “while I was there I messed around in the past a bit with pictures. If something about this timeline changed that’d be proof it was real in some way.”

“Well,” she says, gesturing to your room, “you’ve got the same guitar. I’ve got the same pictures on the wall. I don’t see any differences, do you?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Oh, hang on, baby, phone’s ringing,” she says, rolling over and grabbing her phone. “This is Max Price-Caulfield, what’s up?”

You watch her. She’s so pretty you can’t help but watch her. But as you watch her skin goes pale, and she frowns. Then she holds the phone out to you.

“Who is it, babe?” You ask, perplexed.

“She says she’s Rachel Amber.”

“Rachel?”

You grab the phone from her, and hear a familiar voice on the other end.

"Hey, Chloe, been awhile."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs Referenced:  
> -The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton, by the Mountain Goats.
> 
> Other References:  
> -Sorry to Bother You  
> -But I'm a Lesbian  
> -Alice Isn't Dead  
> -Within the Wires  
> -Dragon Age II  
> -Your World Will Fall  
> -Firefly  
> -Back to the Future  
> -Doctor Who  
> -Bladerunner
> 
> And that's it everyone! Thank you all, so, so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed it, and I love you all!


End file.
